"Green Danger"

Vienna, 2 November 2002

Translation of article by Kurt Seinitz, Foreign Editor of Kronenzeitung

This is not about "The Greens." It is about the new description in the West of militant Islam, which is presently being discussed at a conference promoting dialogue between the East and the West, a conference about the "War of Cultures."

The danger however is not Islam per se, but a fascist ideology, which has taken root inside Islamic culture. On one hand it blames the "arrogant West" for all evil but it has on the other hand claimed far more Muslims among its victims than non-Muslims, more non-whites than whites (as in Kashmir, Sudan, and Algeria, not to speak of the bloodiest war since 1945 between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988 with one million dead).

Voices at the conference pointed out that these forces of totalitarianism are reactions to the modernizing shocks of globalization, as Islam itself has historically been lacking in reform movements of its own: "When the West came to us it failed to develop modernization, it ordered us to, instead."

Resistance had already begun against the Soviets in Afghanistan and in Iran against the excessive modernization introduced by the Shah, which uprooted Iranians from their traditional lifestyles. "Arab Socialism" was only an anti-colonial interlude, which did not live up to its expectations. Its disappearance, together with the Soviet Union created a vacuum among the masses of the poor and the young in the cities and their quest for social justice was left to be filled by Islamic fundamentalism.

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