Word: jihadism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Many follow a peaceful, tolerant version of Sufism. Most of the country's educated élite wants to keep religion in the mosque and out of government. Yet when firebrand clerics such as Mullah Fazlullah, a militant leader who spews antigovernment diatribes from his pirate radio station, calls for jihad, threatens girls who go to school and boasts squadrons of suicide bombers ready to detonate explosives, the moderate mullahs stay silent. Virtually unhindered, al-Qaeda has regrouped in the ungoverned tribal areas along Pakistan's long border with Afghanistan, and a newly unified militant group is hounding the military with...
...conventionalists gained the upper hand after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Tens of thousands of Pakistanis charged across the border to aid their brothers in defending Islam, and Muslims around the world cheered the success of the mujahedin. The religious groups that backed jihad were given political prominence, and their coffers swelled with contributions and fees earned for training and supplying jihadis. The moderate religious groups who refused to sanction killing, even in the defense of Islam, were punished with political purgatory, from which they have yet to emerge...
...dreams of a better life for Muslims back a generation." Muslims, she says, "became [al Qaeda's] victims too." For the first half of the book, Bhutto attempts to reclaim Islam from the perversion of fundamentalists that would use it for political advantage, explaining how the concept of jihad, meaning a personal struggle "to follow the right path," had been adulterated for the purposes of fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She puts the treatment of women as described in the Koran into context, demonstrating how at the time it was revolutionary and far more progressive than what was practiced...
...thus deepened existing animosity towards America and reinforced the mandate of international jihad. Indeed, according to MIPT data, acts of jihadist terrorism on Western citizens and interests outside of Afghanistan and Iraq have risen by 25 percent since the invasion—a statistic that provides compelling evidence for correlation between America’s heedless interventionism and the recent boom in global terrorism...
...going to defeat everybody out there. You have to turn them." And many of America's enemies were ripe for turning. Before the surge, elements of al-Qaeda in Anbar province were carrying out grisly atrocities against local Sunnis, including women and children, who refused to join the jihad against Americans. The Sunnis approached the Americans for help, and Petraeus was happy to oblige. The local uprising against al-Qaeda is known as the Anbar Awakening, and it gave the U.S. a model for turning local tribes, clans and whole neighborhoods against the insurgents...