{"id":232,"date":"2008-10-28T11:20:21","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T11:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/why-alqaeda-is-endorsing-mccai.html"},"modified":"2008-10-28T11:20:21","modified_gmt":"2008-10-28T11:20:21","slug":"why-alqaeda-is-endorsing-mccai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/why-alqaeda-is-endorsing-mccai.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Al-Qaeda is Endorsing McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eboo Patel refflects  on the reason in his blog on Washington Post’s On Faith<\/a> <\/p>\n

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election.” <\/p>\n

So reads a website closely associated with Al-Qaeda, according to Nick Kristof in his Sunday New York Times column<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It’s no surprise that Bin Laden and his henchman are watching the American election (any bets on the cable channel they prefer?). But their presidential pick probably raised some eyebrows. I spent a good part of my Sunday wondering why they chose McCain.<\/p>\n

I dismissed the idea that Bin Laden actually wants the rendez-vous that McCain promises at the Gates of Hell. I think the terrorist is probably pretty scared of the old Navy fighter pilot in a mano-a-mano situation. <\/p>\n

Joe Nye, a former Clinton Administration official, makes an important point in the article: “From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is good for recruiting.” <\/p>\n

But I think Kristof hits the nail right on the head when he compares McCain’s position to other mistakes made in recent American history: <\/p>\n

“During the cold war, the American ideological fear of communism led us to mistake every muddle-headed leftist for a Soviet pawn. Our myopia helped lead to catastrophe in Vietnam. In the same way today, an exaggerated fear of ‘Islamofascism’ elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests.” <\/p>\n

Bin Laden has been an amazing failure in attracting Muslims to his call for an all-out war against the West. Almost no Muslims want that war, and even fewer are actually willing to fight in it. <\/p>\n

So Al-Qaeda has gone to Plan B: create the illusion that more than a tiny handful of Muslims are engaged in this battle. That’s one of the reasons that Al-Qaeda chooses respectable members of a society – engineers, doctors<\/a> – to carry out attacks. <\/p>\n

But illusions are only successful when the audience gets duped. Too many McCain supporters have bought the Al-Qaeda line.<\/p>\n

Read the entire post here…<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eboo Patel refflects  on the reason in his blog on Washington Post’s On Faith  “Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election.” So reads a website closely associated with Al-Qaeda, according to Nick Kristof in his Sunday New York Times column. It’s no surprise that Bin Laden and his henchman are watching the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08","category-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Al-Qaeda is Endorsing McCain - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/why-alqaeda-is-endorsing-mccai.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Al-Qaeda is Endorsing McCain - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Eboo Patel refflects  on the reason in his blog on Washington Post’s On Faith  “Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election.” So reads a website closely associated with Al-Qaeda, according to Nick Kristof in his Sunday New York Times column. 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}