Al Qaeda's Challenge

Via New York Times (Op-Ed by William McCants) -

Osama bin Laden’s long-sought revolutions in the Arab world are finally happening, and the upheaval would seem to give Al Qaeda a rare opportunity to start building the Islamic states it has long sought.

Ideally, these states would not have parliaments (human lawmaking usurps God’s role as lawgiver) and would be hostile to U.S. interests. But so far at least, the revolutions have defied bin Laden’s expectations by empowering not jihadists but Islamist parliamentarians — Muslims who engage in parliamentary politics to increase the influence of Islamic law but who refuse to violently oppose U.S. hegemony in the region.

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Good piece on the current movements and it's potential impact on AQ.