Rebels Reject Jihad Are Reports of al-Qaida in Syria Exaggerated?

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/syrian-rebels-dispute-reports-about-al-qaida-fighters-in-their-ranks-a-849983.html

Some rebel checkpoints in Syria are currently flying the black flag of al-Qaida. One of the flags is attached to a stick stuck into a tire weighed down with rocks in front of a checkpoint manned by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Aleppo, the country's largest city. The Islamic creed, "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God," is written in Arabic on the flag.

Even though it is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, the clean-shaven men at the checkpoint offer the foreign reporter something to drink. Some do not abide by the fasting requirement.
When asked whether they know they are flying the al-Qaida flag, one of the fighters responds: "Of course we know, but is it al-Qaida's invention? It's also the flag of the Prophet, and we fly it because we are Muslims and we are waging a holy war."

Nothing illustrates the gray area between reality and perceptions of the war in Syria more concisely than this flag, which comes in various colors. Sometimes it has white lettering on a black background, and sometimes black lettering on a white background.

[Igel]

1. Q

"Holy war", apparently, isn't "jihad." Or perhaps the only True Jihadis are alqaida.

With the provision that AQ is, precisely, a narrow, top-down organization with a unified hierarchy that definitively determines the goals and the means to the goals.

Yet during the "struggle" against AQ the claim was precisely the opposite: That AQ was a blurred mess after its central leadership as dispersed, and the real danger created by * was not allowing AQ in the strict sense to exist but a more finely spread, decentralized, diverse kind of "AQ movement."

Now that the "* unleased a decentralized AQ on the world" theme is inconvenient, it must be ignored. Jihad, however, isn't just a peaceful struggle for self-control and enlightenment, nor is it "holy war," it is precisely the war as fought by AQ. As though, somehow, the label is more important than the referent.

The really important struggle, I guess, is to make sure that we're on the side of the right words. No matter how often we redefine them.