The spillover effect

It is nine years since 9/11. Writers dwelling upon the rage of Islamists, and how to deal with it, have shed about as much ink in these years as their subjects have shed blood. Neither appears to be done.

“Radical Islam is the greatest threat facing the world today,” Tony Blair bellowed this month in a BBC interview, part of his promotion campaign for A Journey, a memoir about his days at 10 Downing Street. Much of the book is an attempt to justify the former British prime minister’s actions as a junior partner in the US-led war on terror, waged against alleged Islamist groups and regimes in the aftermath of 9/11.

His critics point out that the war only fed the rage of Islamists and led to a global spread—its most recent example being a triple-bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, a day before Blair’s interview, in which at least 25 Shias were killed and 170 injured.

But their blood is just a drop in the ocean that Islamists began spilling much before 9/11 and the war on terror—just as Blair’s hollering, expected to earn £4.6 million (around Rs. 33 crore), is a humble cog in what Saudi-British scholar Madawi al Rashid has called an “industry” of studies on radical Islam and its impact, spawned by 9/11.

Full report here Mint