Kevin Barrett "No Such Thing as Radical Jihad"

We are used to Kevin Barrett saying off the wall things, but this has to be at least in the top 10%. On his radio show a couple of weeks ago he was interviewing Kyle Hence, the producer of Press For Truth, regarding the upcoming novel Shell Game. The actual author will be on the show later in the month. In any case, Barrett continues his complete denial of Islamic driven terrorism or even the concept of jihad, apparently he knows something that the rest of the Islamic world does not.

Barrett: The whole notion that there is such a thing as a radical jihadist ideology and we know what it is, is already a little bit of a leap. What I have discovered based on experience....

Hence: Well people are always strapping bombs on themselves…

Barrett: Well right, but the idea that that has some connection with Islam or with Muslims is completely ridiculous. There is a study out of the University of Chicago that shows that suicide terrorism, it is called the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, I’ll remember the author’s name in a bit. He points out that whenever there are foreign occupations, there is always suicide terrorism to fight back the occupiers. The world’s biggest suicide terror outfit is the Tamil Tigers who are a secularist group out of Sri Lanka. There is absolutely no statistical correlation whatsoever between Muslims and suicide terrorism, some of the most ferocious Palestinian terrorists are Christians, atheists or agnostics. In fact the Palestinians, the violent Palestinian resistance has been disproportionately led by people from a Christian ackground. It is only recently that Hamas has become so well known. There is actually no connection there to Islam whatsoever, number one, and number two, most of this resistance is utterly justified. If you accept any sort of
political violence anywhere, if you are not saying that every army in the world has to lay down all of its arms and never so much as bunch anybody, then you would have to say that the most just struggle in the world is the Palestinian struggle, and that Hamas and Hezbollah are carrying out the most absolutely, the struggle that is totally in line with the ideals of the American founding fathers, who struggled against imperial oppression.

Oh really. Well I suggest that Barrett do some post-doc research and travel to Waziristan, Darfur, Khandahar or Fallujah so that he can see for himself that there is no such thing. In fact I would even be willing to chip in for the airfare.

Incidently, continuing in the tradition of Kevin Ryan, Barrett is now suing the University of Wisconsin for not hiring him, and his begging for money for legal expenses. Gee, you think it might have something to do with the fact that you are an Islamic Studies professor who has less of an understanding of Islam than the average 19 year old PFC who has served a tour in Iraq? Maybe the troofers should just set up a permanent "Kevin legal fund".