Cheeze_Pavilion said:
[That's the question that should really be asked: how did a culture that was so open to science and learning and trade and outsiders turn into a culture that only takes interest in the modern world's more efficient and terrifying ways of killing people? How did Islam go from Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent to bin Laden?
Welcome to the wonderful world of "extremism." The question you asked has a much, much more complicated answer, of course. I just wanted to get out of the way that you're talking about a loud, violent, unreasonable minority grouping in the world's second largest religion.
To start off with, at some point in the past (I think the 12th century or so), there was a major internal conflict within the clergy of the Muslim world (I think it was the Abyssid Caliphate still in power?). The immediate question being asked was something along the lines of "Is the Qu'ran created by God or co-existant with God?" The two sides arguing this represented progressive and traditionalist movements, respectively, and the ultimate result of their conflict was victory for the traditionalists. That's probably oversimplified, but the point is that the clergy effectively froze Islamic theology into one set interpretation, and hardline legal theories became more favored. Sharia law was set to reflect this.
Now, at some point in the past century or so, there started an organization called the Society of Muslim Brothers (Muslim Brotherhood for short). They were involved in a bunch of pan-Arab activity throughout the Middle East, but didn't have very many successes. In one case in particular, Egypt, their actions were crushed so badly that some of their members started to rethink their whole "non-violence" shtick. Long story short, while the Muslim Brotherhood eventually recovered, these certain members were influenced by some of the aforementioned hardline legal theories, especially those with the concept of "fiqh" (essentially, the ability to denounce other Muslims as heretics), and they and their ideas found a home in Saudi Arabia.
To further cut a long story short, true modern Islamic terrorist organizations are descended from the Wahhabist ideologies fostered by those former Brotherhood members. Aside from being a very small but violent grouping altogether, who draw their membership mainly from the ranks of lower-middle to upper-middle class disaffected Muslims (much lower or much higher, and people tend to have other concerns), there are two very,
very important aspects of this grouping that tend to be looked over in the west.
First off, groups like Al Qaeda are extremely iconoclastic;
they don't like the clergy. Osama bin Laden probably has dozens of fatwas out on him right now, especially since he had the audacity to issue a few of his own; his break with mainline clerics is near-total, and they perceive him as not just a dangerous crackpot, but a usurper (he's not clergy, or a recognized legal expert). Second, most of their ire is directed towards
other Muslims, Shi'a and Sufis in particular. This is where the concept of fiqh comes back in, as those terrorist groups are universally convinced that the Shi'a all deserve to die. Ironically, this means that most of them view Iran as a greater threat and insult than Israel. It's not a coincidence that Israel's most vocal critic (besides its next-door neighbors) is a Shi'a-led theocracy trying to deflect attention.
There
is a third thing to mention, I guess. People in the west quite often don't distinguish between terrorist motivations. There's a vast gap between the motivations and desires of, say, Al Qaeda and Hamas. We can deal with the latter. There's none of that with the former. I don't know if this came up in the previous pages or not, just thought I'd mention it.
