Fighting for Islam

Since the election terrorism has slid off the front burner, but if another attack happens, it will of course slide right back.

Last June Policy Review published an essay on a topic that is by and large ignored--how to ideologically fight Islamic terrorism. Sec of Defense Rumsfeld and Sec of State Rice have both said that this is crucial, but few in the media have written about this.

The essay is called "Religious Sources of Islamic Terrorism." It is written by Shmuel Bar, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel and a veteran of the Israeli intelligence community.

Here is his conclusion:

Only by setting up a clear demarcation between orthodox and radical Islam can the radical elements be exorcized. The priority of solidarity within the Islamic world plays into the hands of the radicals. Only an Islamic Kulturkampf can redraw the boundaries between radical and moderate in favor of the latter. Such a struggle must be based on an in-depth understanding of the religious sources for justification of Islamist terrorism and a plan for the creation of a legitimate moderate counterbalance to the radical narrative in Islam. Such an alternative narrative should have a sound base in Islamic teachings, and its proponents should be Islamic scholars and leaders with wide legitimacy and accepted credentials.11 The “Middle-Easternization” of Asian Muslim communities should also be checked.