By Barry Rubin

Many years after September 11, despite more than 10,000 terrorist attacks by radical Islamist groups alone, there is still an amazing amount of confusion and falsehood over what should be a very simple point: What is terrorism all about?

The answer is politics and, to be specific, revolutionary politics. Most obviously, terrorism is a tactic used by political groups but, most importantly, it is a strategy. Defining who and what is “terrorist” should be neither a moral judgment nor a propaganda exercise. It is a simple use of political analysis.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I am intimately surrounded by enemy propaganda and I’ve only myself to blame. For example, I have been reading Publishers Weekly (PW) for a very long time. I don’t have to but I won’t give it up. Yes, I have noted the leftward drift of their reviews but, like the New York Times, whose editors and book reviewers have drifted similarly left-ward, PW remains a “must” for all those who want to read reviews of upcoming book titles and who want to know what publishing deals are in the works.

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Interview by MEF*

Mohamed Sifaoui was born on July 4, 1967, and spent most of his childhood in Algeria. He holds a master’s degree in political science and studied theology for two years at the University of Algiers and for two additional years at Zeitouna University’s Institute of Theology in Tunis. In 1994, he began work for the Algerian daily Le Soir and survived a February 11, 1996 bomb attack at Le Soir’s headquarters at the Maison de la Presse. In 1999, the French government granted him political asylum after he received death threats both from Algerian Islamists and the military. In Paris, Sifaoui works at the French weekly Marianne. Between October 2002 and January 2003, he infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell in France in order to research his book, Mes frères assassins: Comment j’ai infiltré une cellule d’Al-Qaïda. (My assassin brothers: How I infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell).[1]

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By Barry Rubin

Radical forces in the Middle East have rewritten the international rulebook in a way designed so “they can’t lose.” That is, there’s no easy response to their behavior and strategies.

What’s even more worrisome is the widespread failure in the West even to realize this is happening. Hamas and Hizballah fire from among civilians and use civilian homes for military purposes; Syria or Iran deploy disinformation, radical regimes pretend moderation, and there are plenty of suckers to take the bait.

Extremism makes many believe that kind words and concessions can transform them; intransigence produces a response that if they won’t give up we must do so.

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By Barry Rubin

One of the things least understood by people in the West is the framework–or should I say straitjacket?–of the dominant ideology in the Arabic-speaking world in shaping thought, speech, and political alternatives. This shows up in the smallest of exchanges. But atoms, too, are very tiny yet make up all the wide variety of things in the world.

Call it AIDS (Arab Ideological Doctrine Syndrome), a disease that doesn’t just threaten the Middle East, it’s been a plague since the 1950s with few signs of a let-up. Here’s a little example that illustrates the big picture. On February 25, Lebanese cabinet minister Marwan Hamada gave an interview to Press TV. It is a commonplace for supporters of Lebanon’s government to be accused of being Western agents, an implication often repeated in the Western media referring to it as “pro-U.S.”

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by Daniel Pipes*

This month, Denmark’s police foiled a terrorist plot to murder Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who drew the strongest of the Muhammad pictures, prompting most of the country’s newspapers to reprint his cartoon as an act of solidarity and a signal to Islamists that their threats and violence will not succeed.

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by R. John Matthies*

Not long ago a list of “unique issues affecting Muslim Americans” was posted at the Muslim Americans for Obama ‘08 website. This describes a number of “recommendations” drafted to advance the discussion of lawful Islamism and exceptional accommodation in the United States. These suggest both that “Islamic” comportment is beyond reproach, and that one is always correct to press the case for inviolable “Muslim” space.

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by Andrew Whitehead

In a February article in Tampa Bay Online, Karen Dunham is lauded as providing much needed resources to Palestinian refugees in camps in the Middle East. Dunham, of the Living Bread International Church, enjoys the cooperation of the Israeli armed forces and has her headquarters mission in Jerusalem, with mission outposts in Bethlehem, Jericho, and another planned for Hebron.

Dunham’s group passes out food, clothing, and Bibles to those who seek her group’s assistance.

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by Daniel Pipes*

George W. Bush’s policies toward the Middle East and Islam will loom large when historians judge his presidency. On the occasion of his concluding his 8-day, 6-country trip to the Middle East and entering his final year in office, I offer some provisional assessments.

His hallmark has been a readiness to break with long-established bipartisan positions and adopt stunningly new policies, and by late 2005 he had laid out his novel approach in four major areas.

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by Jonathan Fine*

Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, there has been a steady rise in Islamist terrorism. Too many analysts underestimate the ideological basis of terrorism and argue instead that rational-strategic rather than ideological principles motivate Islamist terror groups. Comparison between terrorist groups with secular and religious agendas, however, suggests that ideology matters for both and that downplaying religious inspiration for terrorism in an effort to emphasize tactical motivations is both inaccurate and dangerous.

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by Daniel Pipes*

Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron — or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.” Really.

His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Full Circle: A Memoir, by Edith Kurzweil (Transaction Publishers, 312 pp., $34.95)

Edith Kurzweil has lived many lives and prevailed against tremendous odds. As an Austrian Jew, she was not meant to live at all; as a first-generation immigrant in America, she wasn’t expected to succeed; as a woman, who was also a 1950s-style wife and mother, she was not supposed to become a scholar in her own right. But Kurzweil refused to identify herself as a victim, choosing instead to view adversity as a useful challenge. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology, became a professor, and published a number of thoughtful books including The Freudians: A Comparative Perspective, The Age of Structuralism, and Nazi Laws and Jewish Lives: Letters from Vienna. She also married three times, the final time to William Phillips, the founder of Partisan Review. Kurzweil served as executive editor of this highly influential magazine from the late 1970s until its demise in 2003.

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By Barry Rubin

Much will be said about Benazir Bhutto’s assassination; little will be understood about what it truly means. I’m not speaking here about Pakistan, of course, as important as is that country. But rather the lesson–as if we need any more–for that broad Middle East which begins in Pakistan and ends on the Atlantic Ocean coast.

This is a true story. Back in 1946, an American diplomat asked an Iranian editor why his newspaper angrily criticized the United States but never the Soviet Union. The Iranian said that it was obvious. “The Russians,” he said, “they kill people.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

I knew that trouble had found me yet again when an old Asia hand cautioned me to not “jump off the deep end” and jeopardize my otherwise valuable credibility. Apparently, my second blog about Bhutto’s assassination had begun to ring all kinds of bells and whistles amongst my colleagues, friends, and readers. She felt, understandably, that my bringing a feminist perspective about honor murders to bear on the Bhutto murder revealed a lack of sophistication about Pakistani politics. Point well taken—but read on.

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by Dr. Steve Carol

As the Olmert government continues its obsession to basically ignore continued Arab rocket attacks on Israeli towns and citizens, to surrender additional territory including Jerusalem, and do the work of previous Arab/Muslim conquerors and uproot Jews from the Land of Israel even before the Arabs achieve victory — news continues to flow in which raises the question again and again, “Is there a bottom to the pit of depravity to which the current Israeli government will sink?”

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