I have been discussing for more than a year now how Bush's horrible foreign policy is enabling the rise of a Fundamentalist Islamic Caliphate, uniting fundamentalist Sunnis against us world wide.
I discussed this regarding Somalia and its neighbors [1] (which got me invited onto BBC Radio twice, though I only went on once,
I discussed this regarding Pakistan [2], our supposed ally which Barack Obama is right not to trust (remember, the elite forces of the Pakistani army put the Taliban in place in Afghanistan and are probably sheltering them now),
And even regarding such normally stable nations like Morocco [3], Bahrain [4], and Bangladesh [5].
My simple message is Bush is actively antagonizing pretty much every Muslim in the world while ignoring the REAL fundamentalists, thus allowing those fundamentalists to become heros almost across Islam. In fact, about the only nation that is almost certainly NOT open to the rising al-Qaeda/Taliban/Saudi style fundamentalism is Iran...and look what we are doing there.
Bush is, in my mind, enabling the rise of a fundamentalist Caliphate.
Funny thing about predictions...sometimes they show signs of coming true. I chose the term "Caliphate" deliberately because I saw it as a future endpoint of Muslim extremist sentiment someday. I wasn't even aware whether any movement was actually USING that term. It was the concept of a fundamentalist, Sunni, unified Muslim empire that I was referring to.
But there is a movement that is USING the term and using it in much the way I am. From BBC News [6]:
Some 100,000 Islamists have met in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, to press for the re-establishment of a caliphate across the Muslim world.
The Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir - which organised the conference - said it had been the largest gathering of Muslim activists from around the world...
Hizb ut-Tahrir - or Liberation Party - was founded in Jerusalem in the 1950s by Palestinian religious scholar Taqiuddin an-Nabhani.
Today it has a mainly clandestine following in the Middle East, a large presence in Central Asia - where hundreds of its members have been jailed - and active supporters in the West, including London, which is believed to be one of its main bases.
Many experts see it as ideologically close to jihadist groups, and suspect its commitment to peaceful means is purely tactical.
Indonesia did its best to keep the most extreme speakers away and keep everything quiet. But what we have is a wave of fundamentalism sweeping across Islamic nations, either in terms of taking over governments (Somalia, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain...) or leading armed terrorist rebellions against the government in an attempt to set up a fundamentalist government (Morocco, Bangladesh, Iraq...) and a political wing that is pushing for a unified Caliphate.
And all of this has been going forward merrily under Bush's watch almost unchecked. If anything, Bush's failed policies have ENCOURAGED the growth of this nasecnt Caliphate.
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