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Our Shared Islamist Enemy

(Foreign Policy) Yair Shamir - After the recent terrorist attacks in Boston, there was immense incredulity when the ethnic nationality of the perpetrators was made known. The U.S. had not played a significant role in the decades-long war in Chechnya. Modern terror connected to an extremist Islamist mindset is simply something that many in the West are unable or unwilling to truly understand. We ignore terrorists' ideology at our own peril. We would not accept Christians meting out vengeance against Muslims for massacres in Nigeria or the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt. Why do we accept the argument that perceived Muslim persecution in one part of the world necessitates Islamist violence in another? The perpetrators of the Boston attacks, while seemingly unconnected to a terror organization, are examples of people imbued with a radical ideology. Aggressive and offensive jihad, unconnected to any particular conflict or borders, is a murderous and invasive mindset that drove the Tsarnaev brothers to attack innocent civilians in Boston. The writer, Israel's minister of agriculture, is a former commander in Israel's Air Force.
2013-05-02 00:00:00
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