After the carnage in Paris, Western governments turned immediately to debating the usual tactics for “bringing the terrorists to justice.” Should we employ drone strikes, they wonder? Boots on the ground? Police? The much more important matter, however, is identifying and stopping the source of the nihilism, misogyny, and sectarian animus that’s found fertile breeding grounds in the civil wars of the Middle East. Unless the source is addressed, there will be an endless supply of terrorists wreaking havoc. While virtually all Islamic scholars dispute the theological soundness of the ISIS ideology, the group’s roots lie in fundamentalist Sunni Islam, specifically the Wahhabi strain officially espoused by Saudi Arabia — our “ally” — which views Shiites as apostates and seeks to turn Islamic societies back to an intolerant (and imagined) medieval past.
At fpif.org
