“No Peace Without Islam”

Received one of the irregular news update bulletins from Kavkaz Center just now. Was just googling to find the precise details of a reported press conference held by Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Mansur in Somalia this week. For more on Sheikh Mukhtar see this recent interview.
“No Peace Without Islam” is the title of a new programme that he announced. Only this programme has been announced previously by Abu Yahya al-Libi in late June this year. You can watch the full video by clicking through the links here.
And then I find the following reference:

For such an appeal by bin Laden, see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1286, “Bin Laden’s Speeches 2003-2006,” September 8, 2006. See also an article titled “No Peace without Islam” published by the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC, now called Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) in the October 2005 issue of its journal Al-Jama’a. The author of the article, Abu Mus’ab ‘Abd Al-Wadoud (now the group’s leader) calls on the Algerians to refrain from signing agreements with the government, and to invest their efforts in reestablishing the historic Islamic caliphate. Al-Jama’a, October 2005, p. 24 link

Of course, it’s a variant of various refrains that you can trace through the twisted path of ‘political Islam’. In as far as it relates to Afghanistan – who are running up to Peace One Day – I’d say that Islam is here to stay. It remains applicable to the issue of negotiations, though. A significant proportion of the Taliban’s fighting force is religously-motivated – again, just like in the 1980s against the Soviets – and given conviction from fatwas pronounced by local Mullahs…this means that there is no way to ‘convince’ or negotiate your way out of the conflict.