29 June 2015
Four years after the killing of Usame bin Laden, Al Qaida, far from being eradicated, has new footholds in the Middle East. Its offshoot IS now controls swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, extending its reach to Africa, Asia and displaying an insatiable hunger for violence. Thousands of Muslim recruits have joined its ranks from all over the world. By standing up to the Iraqi regular army, the Shiite militias and the US-led coalition air strikes for more than a year, IS has now gained an aura of invincibility. The result is an upsurge in violence as reflected in the last assault on Kobani and terrorist attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait.
The world is worried. Moslem countries should worry more than others because increasingly frequent use of the expression “Islamist/jihadist terror” serves neither their faith nor their interests. Furthermore, it is essentially their people who are bearing the brunt of the suffering. If the present trend is allowed to continue, the cultural divide which separates them from the rest of the world would become impossible to bridge and millions of Muslims living in other countries would become suspect. Okumaya devam et →