Jihad, hirabah, this War on Terror is slowly giving me a slight working knowledge of arabic. Now I have a new word to add fitna. This is the highly discouraged practice of muslims warring on other muslims. These words are all under linguistic assault with Al Queda issuing newspeak dictionaries to justify their shifting wartime tactics.
The terrorists have grave need for these newspeak dictionaries because even under the traditionally martial norms of Islam, what Al Queda is doing is far outside the bounds of normal muslim behavior. It is the linguistic and theoretical innovations of Al Queda that are most threatening, not their current ability to bomb, shoot, or knife their enemies (including us). They are not particularly efficient at that, after all, but over time an infinite number of terrorists will accumulate serious, even fatal harm. It is the generating capabilities that Al Queda is building up via, in part, by muslim newspeak that is the currently most unaddressed threat.
Posted by TMLutas at February 7, 2004 08:11 AM