Monday, March 3, 2008

Not all Terrorist Attacks are Against America and the West

Unless you count Thailand as part of "the west."

"Muslim insurgency stokes fear in southern Thailand" International Herald Tribune (February 25, 2008) describes "a brutal Muslim separatist insurgency in southern Thailand that has taken as many as 2,000 lives in three years, with almost- daily bombings, drive-by shootings, arson and beheadings."

The Islamic "insurgents" are trying to whip up hatred between Thailand's Buddhist majority and Muslims. " 'Buddhist monks have been hacked to death, clubbed to death, bombed and burned to death,' said Sunai Phasuk, a political analyst with the Human Rights Watch monitoring group. 'This has never happened before. This is a new aspect of violence in the south.' "

Terrorism? Yes.

Islamic? Yes. Although there is probably something of a territorial motive in the Thai insurgency.

Directed against America and/or the west? Hardly, unless any relatively stable, economically successful regime is, by definition, considered "western."

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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.