Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Fareed Zakaria and Others Wrong, Pakistan is Not the "Epicenter of Islamic Radicalism"
Fareed Zakaria and Others Wrong, Pakistan is Not the "Epicenter of Islamic Radicalism"
May 5, 2010
By WILLIAM MAYER
May 5, 2010 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - In an interview prominently displayed on the CNN website [see, http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/05/zakaria.pakistan.terror/index.html?hpt=T1] Fareed Zakaria, who has become an oracle - mainly on the left - regarding American policy vis-à-vis the Muslim world, states what has now become boilerplate among inside the beltway commentators, the assertion that Pakistan is the center of Islamic radicalism.
Determining where Mr. Zakaria's shifting political affectations might be at any one moment is difficult, with his having given lukewarm support for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, but then infamously opposing the now obviously successful 2007 surge, a complete reversal of mind on a key issue in a relatively short period time.
Zakaria's October 2009 statement indicative of a laissez-faire attitude towards an Iranian nuke, "The country does not yet have even one nuclear weapon, and if and when it gets one - something that is far from certain - the world will not end," does nothing to bestow confidence in his ability to provide meaningful guidance on such subjects. [source, http://www.newsweek.com/id/216702/page/1]
Introductory to that alarmingly accommodative pronouncement was the baffling contention that, "When Iran has made gestures, such as suspending nuclear enrichment for two years, Washington has not reciprocated. American support for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War remains a source of justifiable bitterness among Iran's leaders, many of whom fought in that conflict," which suggests a belief that Iran's belligerence is at least partially founded in the sins of the West. [source, ibid]
All of the foregoing is an indication that Zakaria is in ideological alignment on this point with mainstream leftist orthodoxy which ignores what truly is the epicenter of Islamic radicalism, not a particular place per se but a virulent strain of Islam, an ideology which is as Dr. Daniel Pipes observes, "...misanthropic, misogynist, triumphalist, millenarian, anti-modern, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, terroristic, jihadistic and suicidal..." [see, http://www.danielpipes.org/106/aim-the-war-on-terror-at-militant-islam, Aim the War on Terror at Militant Islam]
If one must assign a geographic location - the locus - of this profoundly disturbing cultural tremor, Egypt and Saudi Arabia must take center stage.
While developments along these lines in both of these countries took a markedly different form, they are nonetheless complimentary.
Egypt, especially as understood in the light of two important books, Matthias Kuntzel's "Jihad and Jew Hatred" and Jeffrey Herf's "Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World," must be seen as the fatherland of modern Islamic terrorism, it having served as the point of origination in 1928 of Hassan al-Banna's and Sayyid Qutb's Muslim Brotherhood.
Only the least discursive reading of the history of the current jihad would allow one to ignore the significance of the Muslim Brotherhood [MB] in these matters.
In parallel form, Saudi Arabia commands similar prominence due to policies established by its government through which the Salafist strain in Islam - that popularized by the MB - has been physically imposed throughout the Muslim and non-Muslim world through actions taken by the Saudi bureaucracy including its Ministry for Islamic Affairs.
The confluence of the spreading of a genuinely revolutionary modern interpretation of Islam by the Muslim Brotherhood coincident with the establishment of an ancillary support structure comprised of radical - Saudi influenced - mosques is the swamp from which Islamic radicalism emanates.
Pakistan is only the current obvious flashpoint, a prominent acolyte yet one without which the threat would still exist.
©2010 William Mayer, PipeLineNews.org LLC. All rights reserved.
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=zakaria5.510%2Ehtm
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