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The problem with Al-Qaida is that it's new. It uses political tactics (suicide bombing) for a global purpose. Its aims are unclear precisely because it isn't regional and on global issues like this, that concern the actions of people a consensus is never reached by governments, even when the solution is obvious. So primarily I would agree with points that the article brings up There is no 'end', as such and the rhetoric is all about policy - but when you look at that rhetoric more carefully you realise that any political or strategic aims dissolve. This has always been my problem with the entire notion of Al-Qaida, I don't understand what it wants, the idea that it's a group dealing with the ethical primarily makes much more sense to me.
Now the question... what is being claimed is that all social and political movements, no matter how 'reactionary' are operating at the same moral and ethical level. To a degree I think that you're misinterpreting, not what is being said but meant. The Guardian article always focuses on the global, that's the crux of the article and the reason is that the purpose is so clouded when talking about purely global issues. The article isn't comparing Al-Qaida to any other Muslim groups or the ANC or anything that's intensely political in that way. It's saying look at Al-Qaida, it's like Friends of the Earth. Clouded in purpose, a weird power structure, so global that it's always going to have trouble acheiving a purpose, occasionally prone to violent action but perhaps that action is so divorced from it's meaning that it won't work. The article is about the ethics of intent and not the intention to explode things but the pure intention of acheiving aims and that's an important distinction to make. |
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