[Washington Institute for Near East Policy] Matthew Levitt - If Hamas has one supreme objective, it is to mutate the essentially ethno-political Palestinian national struggle into a fundamentally religious conflict. Accomplishing this goal entails transforming Palestinian society - a relatively secular culture, compared to other Muslim societies in the Arab world - into one that is religiously zealous and politically extreme. Such a project of radicalization is the goal of all violent Islamist groups, from al-Qaeda to Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
2007-02-16 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive