Yes, there are many, including the more elementary type, bringing in young boys from observant Muslim families and introducing them into the severely mind-limiting tenets of fundamentalist Islam. Teaching them to read the holy Koran for themselves, in its holy language, Arabic. That the students cannot understand the language is irrelevant, there are learned mullahs to interpret and bring meaning to the spirit of jihad.
There are generous and never-ending funds available in support of madrases, much of which comes from wealthy oil-producing Gulf states, not the least of which is Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, whose leading families lend their riches in the name of Islam, near and wide, from Pakistan to Canada and places in between.
Radical mullahs, stringently faithful to their belief in Allah and the place of Islam in an unblessed world of corrupted values are slowly but surely undercutting the authority of tribal chiefs while using the time-worn structures of tribal culture to bring populations of pious Muslims to their cause.
Al Qaeda and the Taliban are joining forces as never before in their common cause to bring terror and slaughter in their wake, the end game of achieving world dominance for Islam, the final subjugation of the world to the divine authority of Allah. Al Qaeda officials trade places with mullahs and send their faithful jihadists to support the righteously fascist Taliban.
The West under siege, the West seeing itself and feeling itself under siege is the near goal. All it takes is fervour, religious hysteria, organizational will and the use of modern technology. Impressionable, loyalty-confused young men easily carried away by passionately clever recruiters, become eager to join a holy jihadist movement to wreak havoc in their adopted countries.
A new kind of Mecca emerges where piously energized youth surreptitiously make their way to the terrorist training camps in Pakistan for advanced knowledge in the use of arms and guerrilla techniques and tactics. They return 'home', skilled and confident in their use of attack weapons, convinced of the rightness of their cause.
Islamists, Taliban, are not shy to demonstrate their strengths, which lie almost entirely in their ability to enlist passionate new recruits, eager to sacrifice themselves as martyrs for the cause. For life in and of itself is not to be valued, but rather the elevation to martyrdom and the promises of the hereafter are the coveted prizes of success.
The terrorist-training camps in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan offer their eager recruits the opportunity to become part of a religious revolution like none other before - unless one considers the spread of Islam a millennia earlier. The pinnacle of Islamic achievement, the springboard to world domination which somehow imploded upon itself.
As all such movements, sooner or later, tend to do. Islam had a fair run, ruling parts of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, for centuries, and not doing badly for itself, and for those geographies which it dominated. That was the time of its historic lustre, its brilliant flowering, its monumental achievements.
What is left is clearly a horribly stagnant ideology, which still has meaning for its moderate adherents, but which continues to be contaminated by Islamists whose use of the religion for their blatant purpose of conquest and domination offers nothing but death and destruction.
Labels: Terrorism, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 09, 2007
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