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Terrorism is a tactic, but it is not the only facet in play here, but the overt choice of action that is displayed for public consumption.Right now Islam is at war with itself using their success against the infidels to show that they have to power to establish a new
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Sir,
I agree, terrorism is a tactic used by the salafists to gain power and push aside others within Islam to get their word out. This is a power struggle within the community. At the heart of this, you're right, it is a war within Islam.
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Like any counter-insurgency effort the Us has to use the military in a supporting role to allow the actions (economic, informational, diplomatic, cultural, etc) necessary to remove or resolve the real or perceived problems that are allowing those who would wish to co-opt the religion for their personal agenda.
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Agreed.
Let me play out a quick scenario if you can bear with me.
As a muslim (I'm not, but just for the sake of this argument), everytime I hear a westerner talk about how "Islam is a violent ideology" it makes me uneasy. I'm a 28 year old shopkeeper who isn't really convinced the salafists have my best interest, but definitely see them winning ground. From my small corner of the world, it looks like they're winning and I'd rather be with the winners than the losers. Plus, the west thinks my Islam is violent. The discussion comes up on every news network. So be it then. They keep talking about 'Islam', but what do they know?
In India, you hear grumbles from the hindu fundamentalists (not all that different from the revisionist salafists in my opinion) that muslims are the problem. One group, as it seems, is attacking the overarching ideology (the west) while the other who have more daily interractions with the people is attacking the followers of it (countries where significant muslim non-muslim interraction takes place: India, Thailand, et. al)
What I'm leading to is as you mentioned the subtle tools of warfare (economic, diplomatic, political, cultural, etc) needs to feed the appropriate propganda to decouple the salafist structure from the population they are looking to co-opt (or did I misread this from your post). It may be one small thing, but anytime a newsflash goes across the screen saying "Islamic Terror", my attention as an ordinary muslim is drawn to it. Shia/Wahhabi/Salafist terror just doesn't ring the same bell drawing my attention.
How do we unleash a propoganda campaign and take the initiative by convincing those who feel we are fighting Islam, or losing? Is it a self defeating cycle in the media everytime the word "Islam" goes up, we draw more attention to the salafists than the other way around? The glorification of terrorist acts by the media for attention/validation is sickening. Within minutes a title is attached to the attack, 24 hour news networks have theme song, and we're inundated with redundant images with no real news value.