Primer on al-Qaida (or al-Qaidaism)

The Christian Science Monitor has just published a good one. It goes into more detail than your average overview but still lands on read this in under three-minutes-or-less side. It's particularly good explaining how Salafism fits into the picture. (And if you don't know what the Salafi movement is, well, perfect, read the summary.)

Comments

[Ben]

While the Monitor article might be a nice summary overall, it isn't quite accurate in some respects:

"It is an article of faith that the US and all secular Western states stand in their [Islamist militants'] way, and weakening those states is seen as positive for all their objectives."

However, a message from bin Laden released last year, if genuine, explicitly stated that he's fighting what he sees as the oppression of Islamic peoples by America --and also presumably by Britain (and formerly, Spain) given their involvement in the Iraq adventure --not against Western secular democracies per se:

"If so, then let him [Bush] explain to us why we don't strike for example – Sweden?"

http://wikisource.org/wiki/Text_of_2004_Osama_bin_Laden_videotape

And while I wouldn't be surprised if bin Laden and other militants wanted to see the destruction of Israel (in keeping with the Monitor's claim that their "narrower objectives include the end of the state of Israel"), perhaps it would be more accurate to say (as the Monitor tends to do near the end of its follow-up August 3 piece) that their militancy is more a response to Israel's continuing collective punishment of Palestinians, rather than simply Israel's existence.

I point this out because otherwise the article makes it seem as if there's no possible Western policy choice that would reduce Islamist militancy. Obviously, no Western power is going to seek to end the state of Israel, but the United States could be doing what we should have been doing all along, in seriously using our influence to see that Israel abides by international law.

Finally, while the Monitor piece claims to examine "the origins of Islamic terrorism," it gives little background of the U.S. history of fostering of and alliances with these groups. For a fuller picture, see Juan Cole's recent post at http://www.juancole.com/2005/08/fisking-war-on-terror-once-upon-time.html.