"Bush = Genghis Khan" ... very telling

Submitted by Alex (United States), May 14, 2006 at 00:14

The fact that an American Muslim publication would compare President Bush to a Mongol leader illustrates just how radical the leadership (and at least a large minority of the population) of America's Muslim communities are. The historical narrative of Islam has a cyclical view of history, in which episodes of good and bad fortune recur according to the degree of collective Muslim fidelity to Allah.

The most important of these episodes for present-day radical Islam and jihadi terrorism occurred when the Mongols (led by Hulagu, not Genghis Khan) sacked Baghdad, but then Muslims rallied to the call of Sheikh ibn Taimiyya and eventually defeated the Mongols via guerrilla warfare at Ain Jallout, in today's northern Israel. This episode obviously contains fertile historical material for the Islamist interpretation of the Iraq war, an opportunity not missed by Muslim leaders. How prominent does Dr. Pipes think the Hulagu-narrative is today's Muslim understanding of the Iraq war? I feel like it would be most popular amongst those already inclined towards Islamism--I have spoken with friends from the Muslim world who are not Islamists who did not even know about ibn Taimiyya.

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