The radical Islamist violence in Beirut, aided by a motley crew of has- been leftists, quasi fascists and nationalist groups, directed inwards, highlights the threat the radical Islamists pose to their own societies. Societies that have been sleeping while the radicals have been growing like wild and poisonous mushrooms on a spring lawn. Despite their rhetoric that plays on legitimate national and economic frustrations, their goal is political power- unchecked- except by their own thoughts of what God really really wants. Once in power, by ballot or by the gun, they would rule ruthlessly against others- just as their secular revolutionary predecessers communists did. Some of yester year's communists have re-emerged, with the same old bearded face of leftist youth and folly, as radical Islamists. That seems odd but not really. Both ideologies are rigid, absolutist, totalitarian and violence prone. It’s disgusting the naïve and misguided support that they get from Western sources and...
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