Islam Radicalization the Radicalization of Essay

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The ultimate implication of the events of 9/11 is that Islam has become, as a result of American foreign policy, economic patterns and military endeavors, a hostile and radicalized culture. This is largely based on perceptions in the Islamic World that the Western World acts with favoritism toward Israel in diplomacy, demonstrates a tendency to exploit Arab states with military acts and pursues opportunistic relationships based on its dependence on Mid-East oil. One of the reasons that is most noted for anger with the Western World by Muslim leaders of state and by the average Islamist residing in the Middle East, is the fact that the United States has so strongly supported Israeli statehood.

The Mamdani (2004) text captures this geopolitical disposition particularly well, indicating that the United States, the U.S.S.R. And other global powers helped to create the current Islamic cultural tendencies toward violence and armed resistance. Mamdani notes that "as the battleground of the Cold War shifted from southern Africa to Central America and Central Asia in the late seventies, America's benign attitude toward political terror turned into a brazen embrace: both the contras in Nicaragua and later al-Qaeda (and the Taliban) in Afghanistan were American allies during the Cold War. Supporting them showed a determination to win the Cold War 'by all means necessary,' a phrase that could refer only to unjust means. The result of an alliance gone sour, 9/11 needs to be understood first and foremost as the unfinished business of the Cold War." (Mamdani, 13)

This is an important way of framing the discussion because it distinguishes the political and military objectives that were inherently related to the goals of armed Islamic jihad. Recognition that the United States and others had played a key role in fomenting the violent proclivities which are today regarded as somehow historically Muslim suggests that we are under a misimpression to view Islamic extremism as religious in nature.

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This is a perspective that Gottschalk & Greenberg (?) regard derisively, identifying this as a false stereotype emergent in western media which holds that "ultimately, religious beliefs and acts not only distinguish the terrorists, they motivate the terrorists' irrational violence. The implicit message, then, is that Muslims who do not act religiously can be good, normal Americans, while Muslims who perform Islamic rituals and espouse Islamic beliefs also commit terrorist acts." (Gottschalk & Greenberg, 62)

The discussion here denotes that in addition to the clear motives of political and military import that are reflected in terrorist activity, Husain's text also offers us the resolution that terrorist activities are inherently counterintuitive to Koranic values. This is meaningfully illustrated in a sequence where Husain describes his father responding to his son's bumper sticker promoting Islamic martyrdom. Husain relays that "he said to me, 'My son, the Prophet is not our leader; he is our master, the source of our spiritual nourishment. Leaders are for political movements, which Islam is not. The Koran is his articulation, as inspired by God, not a political document. It is not a constitution, but guidance and serenity for believing heart. Jihad is not a 'way'. Why do those people call for martyrdom when their sons are in the best universities across the West?" (Husain, 52)

This sums up well the hypocrisy of those who have exploited so many young Muslim men to take up holy war and simultaneously delivers us to a point of recognition where religious Islam is concerned. To those who celebrate its values, just as to those in the west who fear the wrath of those they've exploited, terrorism is a treat to Islam.

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