Did the west fail to distinguish between resistance movements and extremists or it simply ignored such distinction?
I think there are a number of elements to answer the question, one element in fact is that some of the leaders in America and Europe don’t want to make that distinction. It suited them, because Islam wasn’t their enemy. It was a just tool to use to try undermining liberalism and a way of thinking which they thought even more dangerous to their concept of near liberal secular state. It was so important in their philosophy, part of that is justified absolutely and any threat to it should be demonized. Any area of accommodating it was an example of weak liberally, I think in one sense it serves the purposes of the philosophy of power. It was also the need to have an absolute enemy, in that sense, understanding that they got the wrong extremist and the wrong moderate, didn’t really matter. The second element is that if you are inside the west, the west is dogmatic, literal, intolerant and intellectual construct. It is also narrowly rational and it is dogmatic so the west cannot understand
