BikerDruid uses expressions like "radical islam". I wonder where he got this term. The only place I have heard of it was on the news and I never heard of it prior to 9-11-2001.
You apparently haven't been paying attention. It's been in use in
book titles as far back as 1989. A Google Books search returned results as far back as 1985, actually, but that's the earliest result where the use of the term is unambiguous.
Where was the term "radical islam" when the USS Cole was bombed? It did not exist then.
The Cole bombing was in 2000. 2000 is after 1989. The term existed, though the Cole attacks were so close to 9/11 that virtually all of the descriptions of the perpetrators were written after 9/11.
Where was the term "radical islam" when the Embassy in South Africa? It did not exist then.
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya aren't in "South Africa", either geographically or nationally.
Here's a book published in 2000, two years after the embassy bombings but before 9/11, talking about "radical Islam" in Kenya (one of the countries that had a US embassy attacked). The term existed then.
Where was the term "radical islam" when Theo Van Gogh was stabbed and beheaded on a public street? It did not exist then.
Van Gogh was murdered in 2004. Not only is this after 1989, it's three years after the date you claim the term "radical Islam" was first coined. Of course the term existed then, by your own admission.
Where was the term "radical islam" when the new president of Iran passed a religious decree that Salmon Rushdie should be killed for exercising freedom of expression? It did not exist then.
Here's a book from 1998 mentioning "radical Islam" in relation to "the Rushdie Affair", before Khamenei's reaffirmation of Khomeini's fatwa. The term existed then.
Where was the term "radical islam" when Palestinians wiped out all of the Israeli Olympic athletes? It did not exist then.
Here's a transcript of Steven Emerson's 1994 testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. It talks about the threat posed by "radical Islam", and mentions the 1972 Munich Massacre in its list of radical Islamic attacks. The term existed then.
It is not true. No one thought of Osama bin Laden was a radical. He was a champion of Islam, not a "radical". We needed to paint him as a kind of Adolf Hitler or something so we could sleep at night. The man was charitable, compassionalte and giving. Ah but we cannot think of him this way. We need to think of him as a "radical" and that he was not part of (a new term) "true Islam".
This is wrong on pretty much every count.
