Worth Looking at: Martian Mariner takes exception to the Okie Gardener's post (read here in its entirety), which featured S. K. Malik's The Quranic Way of War. In conclusion, The Gardener commented: "We are not in a War on Terror. We are in a war with radical Islamists. This is not a new war. We are in another hot period of the nearly 1400 year-long war of Islam against everyone else. We need to understand the enemy in order to defeat him."

Guest Blog Rebuttal: Martian Mariner

"Understand the enemy."

Pakistan and its army is an important ally of our current War on Terror, misnamed as it may be. The reason that every Arab government, and most Islamic governments, are cooperating with us is because radical Salafism is as threatening to their regimes as it is to us. I'm certain that these secular but assuredly Muslim leaders do not consider themselves in the midst of a 1400 year-long war against the West.

My point here is that you're giving the Salafists more credit than they are due, by granting them the point that their brand of Islam is the true Islam. This point is not decided within Islam, and we shouldn't help legitimitize the side which would be most harmful to us.

I for one am not looking for a fight, and to claim that we're in the midst of an epoch-long war can have no benefit in a search for peace.