Chaveirai v'Rabbotai,
I've learned from Debbie that our teacher and colleague Rabbi Reuven Firestone has an article that he can make available "Islam Hijacked". I don't think it is (yet?) available Online.
That the core values of a religious civilization can be hijacked is not unknown to us. Certainly the Crusades do not represent Christianity today (even though they were instigated by the ruling Christian powers of the day and definitely were what generations of Christians, Muslims and Jews knew to be Christianity). Some argue (Neturei Karta and others) that Zionism does not represent Torah True Judaism. So, if Islam is being hijacked by the Taliban, we may be in for a very long, and unpleasant, struggle.
Have you had the opportunity to read Jeffrey Goldberg's articles on militant Islam?
Nor is this a new phenomenon in Islam. I'm sure all of us are familiar with the term "assassin" which comes a significant group and period in Islam (from the 11th to the 13th centuries - not an insignificant amount of time, and controlled an area stretching from Persia to Syria).
Add to this mix the theological expectations of fundamentalist Christians who await a battle of Good against Evil with the Land of Israel at its center. I wrote about this (and got into deep trouble in the April/May 1972 issue of Davka.
When a rock gets tossed into a pool of water, we all know there are ripple effects. Add to this the fact that a big enough rock also causes a splash of other water droplets that spread in unknown directions causing additional ripples that intersect with each other.... We've all seen the recent books on Chaos Theory. Needless to write, I would suggest extreme caution before deciding what to do and the less big rocks tossed the better.
Robert Rosenberg of Ariga has an interesting proposal (no, not teddy bears):
I hope someone with better knowledge and greater wisdom will prove me mistaken.
last modified 15 October, 2001.