[link|http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101011224-188565,00.html|Fundamentalists are perfectly logical, in their own way]

Excerpt:

For the fundamentalist, success has deep religious significance. The logic of the holy warrior is this:

My God is great and omnipotent.
I am a warrior for God.
Therefore victory is mine.

What then happens to the syllogism if he is defeated? To understand, we must enter the mind of primitive fundamentalism. Or, shall we say, re-enter. Our Western biblical texts speak of a time 3,000 years ago when victory in battle was seen as the victory not only of one people over another but also of one god over another. Triumph over the "hosts of Egypt" was of theological importance: it was living proof of the living God--and the powerlessness and thus the falsity of the defeated god.

The secular West no longer thinks in those terms. But radical Islam does. Which is why the Osama tape, reveling in the success of Sept. 11, is such an orgy of religious triumphalism: so many dead, so much fame, so much joy, so many new recruits--God is great.

By the same token, with the total collapse of the Taliban, everything has changed. Omar has lost his robe. The Arab street is silent. The joy is gone. And recruitment? The Pakistani mullahs who after Sept. 11 had urged hapless young men to join the Taliban in fighting America and now have to answer to bereaved parents are facing ostracism and disgrace. Al-Qaeda agents roaming the madrasahs of Pakistan and the poorer neighborhoods of the Arab world will have a much harder sell. The syllogism of invincibility that sustained Islamic fanaticism is shattered.

I say:

If only everyone were as willing to re-evaluate their conclusions once their premises have been shown false. Or vice versa.

Another excerpt:

What the secular West fails to understand is that in fighting religious fanaticism the issue--for the fanatic--is not grievance but ascendancy. What must be decided is not who is right and wrong--one can never appease the grievances of the religious fanatic--but whose God is greater. After Afghanistan there can be no doubt. In the land of jihad, the fall of the Taliban and the flight of al-Qaeda are testimony to the god that failed.

I say:

This is why people like Robert Fisk miss the point so badly. They listen uncritically to what people say, instead of looking for clues to what they mean. Once you discount the rhetoric, it's no great trick to puzzle out their real motives from their various actions and reactions. And then you know what argument needs to be answered, and then you know how to answer it, and with what language.

Now that we are speaking the language of overwhelming force and determination, they are beginning at last to understand us. In the West, war is the ultimate breakdown of civility and communication. But this is not the West. This is the Third World, where force is the only mutually understood language, and war *is* dialogue.