VDH: Why Radical Islam, Why Now?

Few understand and can explain the threats we face from radical Islam like Victor Davis Hanson.

Read any newspaper or turn on any news broadcast and you're bound to encounter stories of Islamic radicals fighting, killing and threatening each other -- and just about everyone else.
• In Somalia, jihadists, with the support of al Qaeda, have clashed with troops loyal to the country's internationally recognized interim government and now threaten neighboring Ethiopia with all-out war.

• Nearby in Darfur, Muslim militiamen called janjaweed wage genocide against black Christian and animist villagers -- apparently with the Sudanese government's consent.

• Shi'ite and Sunni militias, each claiming to represent true Islam, keep slaughtering each other in Iraq.

• Hezbollah ("Party of God") seeks to destroy democracy in Lebanon by provoking Israel, which it is sworn to eliminate.

• On the West Bank, Hamas and Fatah have taken time out from their attacks on Israel to murder each other and innocent bystanders.

• The Iranian Shi'ite theocracy -- when not hosting Holocaust deniers or sending terrorists into Iraq -- issues serial pledges to finish off Israel.

• Pakistan's shaky leadership pleads it can neither target Osama bin Laden nor stop Taliban jihadists hiding in its remote regions from streaming back into Afghanistan.

• In Europe, opera producers, novelists, cartoonists and filmmakers are increasingly circumspect out of fear of death threats from Islamists.

While each conflict is unique and rooted in its own history, the common thread -- radical Islam -- is obvious. It's thus worth asking why this violent, intolerant strain of Islam has taken hold in so many unstable places -- and at this particular time.

The ascent of radical Islam is, perhaps, the natural culmination of a century's worth of failed political systems in Muslim countries that were driven by morally bankrupt ideologies, led by cruel dictators, or both.

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