Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age

Iran’s defiance over international demands that it stop nuclear research could galvanize Shiites to demand more power throughout Asia, leading to nuclear proliferation on the continent. With violence escalating between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, author Noah Feldman ponders how the competing sects might handle a nuclear weapon in their midst. Nuclear weapons have less meaning as deterrents in cultures that accept suicide bombing. Suicide bombing was not a Muslim invention, Feldman points out. Yet the method of warfare spread rapidly throughout Muslim nations – more rapidly than the Koran’s unequivocal stand against suicide. Extremists devised loopholes to label suicide bombers as martyrs, not sinners; at first, extremists justified the deaths of Israeli women and children, gradually extending justification to the deaths of Muslims. US mishandling of the Iraq war has linked anti-Americanism and Islamism for generations to come, Feldman notes. The world must prepare for nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamists, and Muslims - like those in Pakistan - can control interpretations of the Koran, their use of international power and the historical role of any nuclear weapon that might fall into their hands. – YaleGlobal