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Bracing for the Final Battle
(Toronto Star) Olivia Ward - The jihadists are gaining an edge with apocalyptic warnings that a "final battle" between the Muslim world and the West is now inevitable. "I've met Arab teenagers who were trying to raise $100 for a bus ticket to the Iraqi border to join the fight against the Americans," says Middle Eastern scholar Fawaz Gerges, author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy. "They weren't even religiously educated Islamists. It's shocking how radicalized large segments of the Muslim population have become, worldwide." "There is a sense of apocalypse now," says Reuven Paz, director of the Project for the Research of Islamist Movements at the Israel-based GLORIA Center. "Not just youngsters, but people with families, in their 30s, are willing to go to Iraq and blow themselves up. That is something new. About 700 people a year are killing themselves there. They feel that they are living on the eve of the end of history, and the great victory of Islam is coming."