Is radical Islam like the New Left?
Commenting on the banning of UK Islamist group Islam4UK, the Daily Telegraph's Janet Daley observes:
The tactics of these fundamentalist organisations have more in common with the New Left protest groups of the 1960s and 70s than they do with moderate Islam: their strategy is to provoke the state into â??revealingâ? its totalitarian imperatives by creating social disorder and gratuitous offence. Even their tendency to proliferate under different names â?? Islam4UK was already banned under its other incarnations of â??al-Ghurabaaâ? and The Sacred Sect â?? are similar to the old Leftwing tradition of creating â??front groupsâ? to disguise their origins and make the movement seem more multi-faceted.
The New Left was quite a bit before my time so I can't pass much judgment on the accuracy of that analogy. My question is, from the standpoint of Western security, is it a good or bad thing if these groups borrow tactics from the radical left. After all, they didn't make that much headway, did they?
(AP Photos)
