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Article: AT WAR: Liberation, Not Containment: How to win the war on Wahhabism.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- November 19, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To win a war, you must first identify the enemy. In our current war, the enemy's name is Wahhabism.
The Wahhabis, based in Saudi Arabia, are the extremist sect that provides religious support for the horrors inflicted by Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists. Wahhabism emerged in the benighted wastes of Nejd in central Arabia in the middle of the 18th century. Other religions had already experienced bouts of revivalist utopianism, but by the time Wahhabism emerged, these other movements had already been redirected into socially constructive paths: The apocalyptic frenzies that gripped Christendom from the time of St. Francis had been reformulated, through ...