Word: jihadeers
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...U.S.S.R. The assassination of Afghan commander Ahmed Shah Massoud two days before Sept. 11 was meant to eliminate the Taliban's leading opponent before he could help the anticipated U.S. counterattack. Muslim scholars and clerics around the world were expected to call the faithful to unite in jihad against the impious American army storming the Islamic land of Afghanistan. They had, after all, made a similar appeal in the 1980s after the Soviet invasion...
...Islam's most influential scholars and clerics began refusing to give their support to the Kabul regime. Egyptian Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is host of a religious program on the pan-Arab television channel al-Jazeera, issued a statement condemning the suicide attacks. Such acts helped refute the jihad pretenses of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and rob them of all transnational Islamic support...
...confrontation with the West--and who therefore denied the hijackers martyr status and even described them as men who had committed suicide and thus would burn in hell--needed to find a new outlet for the anger of radicalized Muslim youth. That was accomplished by transferring the aspirations of jihad to the Palestinian intifadeh and to the suicide bombings perpetrated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the eyes of these imams, Israel represents a legitimate target of jihad because of its alleged usurpation of an Islamic land. That conflict represents a just war and was a natural choice to replace...
...wielded by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has completely destroyed the infrastructure of the West Bank. Palestinian intellectuals and members of civil society have also recognized the bombings as a political disaster and are leading calls for their immediate halt. In taking the intifadeh hostage, Islamic radicals waging jihad have won, at best, a momentary and illusory victory--and one for which a Palestinian population crushed by repression is paying an exorbitant price. That price will eventually undermine the reputation and allure of the most radical Palestinian militants, as it did in the 1990s, when terror strategies were curtailed...
Gilles Kepel is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and author of Jihad, the Trail of Political Islam