More Muslim militant attacks in India? Must mean that Kashmir is still an unresolved issue.
As long as Indian troops are patrolling lands where Muslim insurgents exist and elicit government responses that ostracize the Muslim public and moderates, there will continue to be attacks from terrorist/insurgent groups on Indian soil. Period.
Local Muslim insurgent groups are being trained, armed and supported by Al Qaida, similar to how they were from 2003-2006 in Iraq. Exporting Jihad to fight various causes allows Al Qaida to recruit and spread their insurgency around the world.
This has everything to do with our "War on Terrorism," which we should actually rename "War on Al Qaida." In order to defeat our enemy, we must first understand them.
Al Qaida's mission is to return Muslim lands back to a regional Caliphate who rules through Sharia Law. This is their end state. In order to do this, they've taken on the "far-enemy," the United States and the rest of the West, who through attrition they believe will withdraw support for oppressive local Muslim regimes, or their "near-enemy," so that they can overthrow the governments and install the Caliphate.
Michael Scheuer, in his book Imperial Hubris, details Osama bin Laden's list of 6 anti-Muslim American policies that Al Qaida uses to recruit and fill their ranks. They are:
1) US support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israeli's thrall
2) US and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula
3) US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan
4) US support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants
5) US pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low
6) US support for apostate, corrupt and tyrannical Muslim governments
The fact is that most people don't understand that we aren't just fighting one war against Al Qaida, we are fighting two, distinctly different wars. They are:
1) To kill or capture key Al Qaida leaders and members of their existing terrorist cells
2) To stop the Al Qaida Social Movement, which mainly exists within greater Muslim society who see Osama bin Laden as a folk hero, exists online in jihadist websites and continues to fill the ranks of Al Qaida actual
For the past seven years, we have all been fighting the first war with little to no regard for the second war, which is infinitely more dangerous. The danger of not winning the first war is exactly what you saw today with the Mumbai attacks, 9/11, 3/11, London Bombings, etc. At most, the danger is the death of anywhere from 50-3,000 casualties each attack. None of these attacks actually threaten the existence of any nation.
However, lose the second war and you risk alienating and pissing off hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims throughout the entire world. Now instead of having a few thousand potential attackers, you have certain parts of the globe that are no-go zones and have a potential clash of civilizations, as Samuel Huntington calls it.
We must be smart. We must work with local law enforcement and intelligence to kill or capture key terrorist leaders. We must take a look at each of the six anti-Muslim policies and see which ones actually are essential to our Homeland Security, which we must remember is the ultimate goal, and end the ones that we deem are not.
In order to defeat Al Qaida and the global Salafi Jihadist insurgency, which has its hands in Kashmir, we must know our enemy and work intelligently to defeat them.
This takes us back to the issue of Kashmir. Solve this problem, appease local Muslim groups in Kashmir with the help of the Pakistani government, and you will find a similar situation to the Anbar Province in Iraq where local insurgents, who ideally want to put down their weapons and take care of their families and live in peace, actually turn against their Al Qaida supporters.
We must make joining the jihad unnecessary, but in order to do that we must bring in our local Muslim populations, support political reforms in Muslim countries, and make joining the Jihad extremely uncool for unemployed local youths in Muslim countries and ostracized Muslim youth in Western countries.
Most importantly, we must never take our eye off both of our wars with Al Qaida. For, we will never win one in lieu of the other.
Bear in mind that the "honor killings" are not closely linked to political control, neither is a fight against honor killings directly threatening to any government.
And can "moderate muslims" have a moderating effect on quotes from the Qur'an, where Allah commands war against the infidel?
Dream on -- IMHO "moderate muslims" are no friends of tolerance in any form . . .
Economic development and education wouldn't be a panacea - most of the 9/11 plotters were middle class and educated and some had lived in the West. Empowering women would help, in India and Africa and Orthodox Israel as well as in Dar-al-Islam.
To quickly stem one criticism, this approach is not hubristic. Since the end of the Cold War, emerging governments have moved to the left and the right and upside down according to their own local needs all without upsetting international order. Offering up the American system as a model is not the same as forcing it upon others.
I understand your approach to labels, but calling it a war on al Qaeda is misleading and can lead to poor application of resources. To meet a standard that would speak right to the heart of our argument within moderate Muslim circles, it may be more accurate to fight a war against the takfiris.
Here's another way to look at the situation, which doesn't repudiate what you're saying, but might tie in a few other useful ideas and give a more holistic way to develop future programs and actions.
Just as during the Cold War, we are facing off against an ideological enemy. Sometimes the faceoffs will be political, sometimes economic, and sometimes violent. Given the daily distractions in those spheres, we can't lose sight of the fact that the ideas that underpin the politics, the economics, the warfare are simply at odds with our own ideas.
Given the common root, I also approach the two paths you laid out as being two branches of a tree, rather than separate struggles. After all, war is politics by any other means. Again, as during the Cold War, the two other major branches where we need to focus are our own economic strength and ideological consistency. We can't be tempted to become a police state out of paranoia nor can we allow our economy to crumble. In order to win a war of ideas, we have to be able to effectively show your "social movement" radicals that not only are their ideas corrupt, but that we actually offer something better. Call it the American Dream if you can stomach the term, and then ask former Warsaw Pact citizens how important Radio Free Europe was to them. It's painfully obvious that we're not doing this well right now.
And only to be redeployed to their next Hell?
Make the World proud of you, be professional seeking the truth and get to the bottom of these attacks against your Country (and the World's freedom).
I'm glad you have some captives to question, hopefully they will be able to shed some light into the who and why of this!
You and all the people in India (NO MATTER WHAT RELIGION), affected by these terrorists, are in our prayers.
condolences and hope for a better future to the good people of india.
In order to combat this scourge, the ideology of jihad has to challenged by moderate Muslims across the world. Moderates need to distance themsleves from the doctrine of jihad. Quranic prescriptions on jhad have to be viewed as contextual, with no applicability in modern times.
A foe greater than Al-Qaeda started in 1917 in Russia and collapsed in 70 years later. Al-Qaeda will also fade away in time.
Al Qaida definitely does exist though. It has various committees and a HQ as well as any number of active/inactive terrorist cells that exist throughout the world. Members of the Al Qaida Social Movement are quick to act when they see or witness anti-Muslim policies enacted on fellow Muslims. These people might not be professionals or members of Al Qaida Central, but they are definitely members of the larger social movement.
There will never be much success in trying to have Western representatives or their Arab surrogates trying to inject themselves into this mess. This is a Muslim problem that must be resolved by the Muslims themselves, first and foremost by ramping up education and job opportunities to allow potential jihadis to join the mainstream. Second, there needs to be a decisive religious education campaign, or a second awakening, aimed at informing the gullible and uneducated masses that the Muslim faith is not much different than Christianity and Judaism, and that anyone attempting to subvert the messages of peace of any religion are infidels, blasphemers and heretics. The table needs to be turned on those who would use religion to achieve any political or social aims through violence or intolerance.
The Muslims controlled much of Europe during the Dark Ages, and did so with tolerance and fairness. We should never forget that ! It was through their scientific discoveries, building upon the work of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans that we managed to emerge from darkness into the Renaissance.
I wish Muslims would recognize the folly of thier inaction.
As a secular Muslim heading a secular Muslim organization in Canada called the Muslim Canadian Congress, we have tried to reclaim the faith from the fanatics but there needs to be a grassroots movement against terrorism acorss the world to send a mesage to extremists that their murderous agenda is not supported by Muslims.