5000-Chapter 10 Religion and Middle Eastern Terrorism
Just as terrorism in the Middle East cannot be understood apart from the rival claims made for the territory of the state of Israel by the state and by Palestinians, so it cannot be understood apart from its religious attributes. But as White explains, building on his explanation of the Iranian revolution as having core importance in respect of international terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism spread outward from Iran, inspired by its example, and setting up a shifting dynamic of interest. White cites three forms of this dynamic: "struggle for control of the Palestinian movement, the directions of revolutionary Islam, and the spread of terrorism from the Afghan war" (1999, p. 152). These three forms all predate 9/11; the Afghan war refers to the Russian invasion. The overarching tendency, however, is the amplification of terrorist ethos, with the Palestinian a key but not the only key to Islamist terrorist ambition. In that regard (and writing in 1999), White mentions the threat from "a group headed by Osama bin Ladin" (p. 152). Curiously, he gives equal weight to the terrorist threat from anti-Arab Jewish fundamentalism, which, given 9/11, can be interpreted as overcaution in the manner of actual threat scale from terrorist behavior.
Still, White's principal focus is on Islamist terrorism. He attempts to clarify and be more specific about the nature of the main Islamic threat. He describes two opinions about Islamic terrorism: 1) that Islamic fundamentalism is a feature of the violent Middle East and Westerners are justifiably fearful, or 2) that Islamic terrorism emanates from isolated pockets of activity, that Islamism is factionalized, and that fundamentalist regimes may actually herald democratic reforms in the long term. In the wake of 9/11 and given the fallout from the U.S. incursion into Afghanistan and the Second Iraq War, it is difficult to see how the second position...