In Reply to: The Last word on this..... posted by Stitch on Thursday, 6. October 2005 at 20:41 Bali Time:
Why would Scott Atran interview such a person?
Scott Atran did the interview for the Jamestown Foundation.
Listed at the top of the Jamestown board members is the name Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was something like the head of the National Security Advisory during Jimmy Carter's Presidency. He was the man in charge of organising the Mujahaideen in Afghanistan and funding them to fight against the Russians. Out of this Mujahaideen was spawned Al Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, which has links to JI, of which Bashir may or may not be the spiritual leader.
It's almost a perfect circle, don't you think?
And yes, Bashir's is a very skewed version of Islamic doctrine. Thankfully, most Muslims recognise this. There's a few skewed versions of Christianity out there, too. How did we get from "love your enemy" and "turn the other cheek" to pre-emptive self defense?