Common Sense

Over at Pootergeek, commenter Jeet provides a lesson in how to answer those who think it’s just “common sense” that Islamist violence is a response to Western foreign policy. An excerpt:

Islamist violence has, on religious grounds, long targeted non-Muslim peoples in Nigeria, Sudan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, et al. Yet Westerners seem largely unaware of this, resulting in the mistaken conclusion that Islamist violence is a response to the West.

but the whole argument is worth a read, including the interesting information that Hizb-ut-Tahrir (of Guardian fame) denounced the Sudanese regime as un-Islamic for signing the peace agreement that finally ended the civil war in the south earlier this year.