Originally Posted by
omarali50
It depends. It depends on whatever rules you want to set up for yourself. You may wish to use the term for the taliban regime that existed in Afghanistan and supposedly now operates from Quetta. Or you could follow the example of the locals in the tribal areas of Pakistan and refer to the local Islamist groups (loosely affiliated with the afghan variety, but not necessarily under tight control of Mullah Omar) as taliban. Or you could use it as a semi-pejorative term for all wannabe jihadis all over the world. In India, you can even use the term "Hindu taliban" when you want to attack the Hindutva fascists (they have their own religious fanatics and can be very bloodthirsty, as seen in the massacres in Gujrat state). The Hindutva fascists will then call all their critics "taliban", meaning they accuse them of being islamist sympathizers or fellow travelers....and so on.
What Imran Hossein says about mosques and islamic centers is exaggerated but not totally untrue. All muslims (even all "observant muslims") are certainly not terrorists or even terrorist sympathizers, but orthodox Islam (not just some "misunderstanding of Islam") developed in a time of Islamic supremacy and was closely associated with the rise and success of the early Arab-Islamic empire. The laws and theology that evolved were in line with the needs of that imperial religious state. They are harsh about dealing with apostates (by definition, traitors to the cause) and blasphemers and relegate other religions to subservient status or worse (pagans get it bad, Christians and Jews not so much). They are also big on holy war since you cannot have an imperial state without a motivated imperial army. By the standards of the age, I dont think that caliphate (and we are primarily talking of the peak of the Abbassid caliphate as most of the theology and all the legal codes date from that period) was particularly intolerant. In fact, a very good case can be made that they were remarkably tolerant by contemporary standards (remember, this is the time when European Christians were launching massive genocidal campaigns of forced conversion and purification in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, not to speak of local actions like the genocide of the cathars, which actually happened well after the Abbasids had said good bye). But no current European state idealizes those actions (or laws like the whipping you could get for not going to church on Sunday in Calvinist Geneva), but Islamist discourse ran into some kind of mysterious brick wall 800 years ago (mongols??) and hasnt moved much since then (not in Sunni lands, the shia are actually more flexible). So if you become an observant Muslim, you dont necessarily become a medieval islamic supremacist because even observant muslims dont usually read and closely follow those legal codes, but you do acquire a general idea that orthodox Islamic law (shariah law) is some sort of beautiful ideal (but one you have never actually consulted). Then one day some moron approaches you in the mosque to convince you that you need to start hating the infidels a bit more; you are not convinced, but he gets you the books and lo and behold, they do actually talk of hating infidels, waging holy war and beating recalcitrant wives. At this point, said observant muslim can either silence his inner fanatic and avoid his new found friend in the mosque (a choice that is far more common than Imran Hossein implies: human beings tend to know which side their bread is buttered, even observant muslims tend to know that) OR he or she can gradually become more and more fanatical and some small but non-trivial subset will start to dream of the lesser jihad....welcome to the shoe bomber.
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