Word: islamist
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...Sayyaf Group, a terrorist gang holding three hostages, including two U.S. missionaries. Green Berets and Philippine Scout Rangers are watching the gang and may try a rescue soon. But the joint exercises are just a warm-up. Abu Sayyaf is more a gang of local kidnappers than a global Islamist terrorist organization. But two larger groups linked to al-Qaeda are in the Philippines. Better-trained soldiers and intelligence agents could help contain al-Qaeda operations inside the country and in nearby Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia...
...Moro Islamic Liberation Front: The largest Philippine Islamist guerrilla group, with more than 12,500 members, the MILF has launched attacks and bombings for four years. Analysts suspect that al-Qaeda now has links to the MILF...
Kepel’s book is quite deserving of this spotlight. Jihad is an academic work, thoroughly researched and precisely excecuted, describing the origins and the growth of the idea of jihad, or Islamic holy war. Kepel traces the historic roots of the “Islamist movement,” lucidly explaining how it has fared within the political history of the Muslim world. According to Kepel, this movement began in the 1930s when political parties began espousing a vision of a modernity which entailed a “complete and total blend of society, state, culture, and religion...
Kepel charactarizes the attacks on America on Sept. 11 as an outgrowth of a movement in decline. He convincingly traces the political history of Islam to prove this point, showing that widespread support of the Islamist movement has dwindled due to the conflicting interests of different demographic portions of the population. He theorizes that the use of terrorism was meant to galvanize Muslims to take up the cause of jihad against the United States. If these were indeed the goals of the attacks, they failed miserably as Muslims everywhere failed to take up arms. The call for an embracing...
This works out rather well for the national leaders involved. President Pervez Musharraf, who has cracked down on Islamist militancy under U.S. pressure, is reluctant to further annoy Pakistan's well-armed radicals. Already, police and several investigators have been threatened. An attack on a police bus carrying 20 militants left one dead, and gunmen believed to be Sunni Muslims slaughtered 11 Shi'a worshippers at a mosque in Rawalpindi. The U.S., for its part, has ample reason not to rush the extradition of Pearl's murderers. Some in the Administration are worried that forcing the issue would be counterproductive...