Global Jihad: temi, piste di diffusione e il fenomeno del reducismo ...

Islamic and Islamist groups emphasize the struggle against Jews and Judaism as
well, highlighting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the supposedly global scope of
Jewish influence, particularly on U.S. policy, culture and decisionmaking. The violent
struggle of Hamas and Hizballah primarily since the 1990s, when the prospects of
reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians seemed close, emphasized the
religious dimension of this old conflict. National and ethnic conflicts in the Balkans
and Central Asia during this time had the same effect, and contributed to the
globalization of the Islamist struggle. Consequently, in many Western societies, Islam
in general has come to be identified with violence, terror, and fanaticism, and is
considered a threat on their individual and communal security.
This association is misleading but unfortunately popular among both Muslim and
Western publics. Terms such as “fundamentalist”, “extremist”, “Islamic”, “Islamist”,
and “political Islam”, are misused by many politicians, decisionmakers, journalists,
citizens, and even scholars in the West. Similarly, Arab regimes—which generally
control the press and to a certain extent, public opinion—tend not to distinguish
between various kinds of Islamic movements, organizations, groups, and
individuals. Although Western influence is partly responsible for this phenomenon,
its roots lie in the fact that many Arab regimes now feel threatened by any movement
that is linked to Islam.
Nevertheless, the “Islam versus the West” paradigm has grown, partly because
different Islamist groups have succeeded in gaining the legitimacy of Islamic
establishments and in presenting parts of their sociopolitical and cultural doctrines
to much of the Arab and Muslim worlds as the only true commentary of Islam. Their
success has been facilitated by a number of factors, including the Arab-Israeli and
Palestinian-Israeli conflicts, the socio-economic problems of Muslim countries,
opposition to most of the local governments, and the general public hostility toward
the West and the United States—a hostility that has equally been encouraged by
various secular, socialist and even semi-Marxist, and nationalist elements in the
region. This success is also attributable to the interdependent structure of different
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