DallasNews -- Political leaders can no longer ignore religion

Al-Qaeda's basic manual begins its lessons to terrorists by recalling "the fall of our orthodox Caliphates on March 3, 1924." Their explicit grievance is the collapse 80 years ago of the Islamic world in the face of "Christendom," a collapse that can be explained only by Muslims' apostasy from "real" Islam and only be reversed by returning to al-Qaeda's extreme version of Islam.

Hence al-Qaeda and its allies from Algeria to the Philippines fight to impose their version of Islam on Muslims and the rest of the world. The Taliban wanted extremist Muslim rule in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan's Islamic movement in Central Asia, the Philippines' Abu Sayyaf and Indonesia's Jamaah Islamiyah in southeast Asia. Al-Qaeda wants it for the whole world.

Yet we ignore these explicit religious goals and instead interpret their acts through a grid of secular Western nostrums about alienation, economics, or the Middle East. We are told that al-Qaeda's primary grievance is America, or "the West," or freedom, or the plight of the Palestinians. But none of these is primary in their videos and their writings.

Refusing to take religion seriously also undercuts the Bush administration's expressed goal of encouraging democracy in the Islamic world.

Meanwhile, the December meeting of Iraqi opposition groups produced a statement that deviates from Iraq's moderate Muslim traditions and proclaims "Islamic faith is one of the fundamental characteristics of the Iraqi state" and that the "rulings of the Islamic sharia (law) are a key source for legislation." Similarly, the new draft of Palestinian constitution says, "Islam will be the official religion" and "the sharia will be the primary source of legislation."

In each case, there is a marked shift away from moderate Islam toward a more extreme version, a shift the administration has not noticed, or whose dangers it underplays.

I have large excerpts from this because it is going to be important. How to handle the religious differences now that we have whacked the hornet's next and tossed ourselves into the briar patch will be key to our getting out unscratched, unstung, and with a safer world.