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Date Posted: 04:07:15 02/14/09 Sat GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Politica Islam re: IRA training camps (Pittsburgh Sun)

POLITICAL ISLAM
Steve Harmon, PSU assistant professor
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Steve Harmon, assistant professor in the Pittsburg State University history department, has studied Islamic extremists groups throughout his career. He will present a free public lecture on “What Is Political Islam?” at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday in room 109, Grubbs Hall. His talk will be part of the PSU College of Arts and Sciences Lecture Series.

By NIKKI PATRICK
The Morning Sun
Posted Feb 14, 2009 @ 01:25 AM

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PITTSBURG —
A native Midwesterner, Steve Harmon has devoted much of his academic career to studying Islamic extremist groups in the Mid East and Africa.
An assistant professor in the Pittsburg State University history department, he believes many Americans have only the most superficial knowledge of Islam, but he’d really like to change that.
Harmon will present a free public lecture on “What Is Political Islam?” at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday in room 109, Grubbs Hall. His talk will be part of the PSU College of Arts and Sciences Lecture Series.
Harmon said he planned to give a definition of political Islam and attempt to define its major tenets.
In 1988 he earned a doctorate from the University of California at Los Angeles, writing his dissertation on certain Islamic radical groups in West Africa.
“I later gravitated further east to the Mid East, and now focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Harmon said.
His studies and research have taken him around the world.
“I have lived and worked for a year or more on five continents — Africa, Europe, Asia, North and South America,” Harmon said.
He received two Fulbright grants for his studies.
Harmon said signs of possible dangers from Islamic extremists came years before the “war on terror” was declared.
“I and my colleagues were saying that there’s this thing called Islam and we need to pay attention to it,” Harmon said.
After the 911 attack, attention was paid, but probably not in the most productive way.
“Using the war metaphor, as in the war against terror, led to the conception of states supporting terror,” Harmon said. “Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda did not have a state supporting them.”
In the 1980s, he noted, terrorism existed but was wrapped up with the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Then the Soviet Union broke apart, so it was no longer available for blame.
The notion that Iraq was the state supporting Al Qaeda was even further off the mark.
“Make no mistake, there were bad guys in Iraq,” Harmon said. “But they were not Sunni extremists. Saddam Hussein did rent out camps for training terrorists to the Irish Republican Army and just about everybody but Al Qaeda. Saddam was killing the Sunni extremists, and by taking him out, the United States made it safe for them.”
He has a further objection to calling the struggle against terrorism a war.
“Jumping on the war metaphor made the terrorists into warriors,” Harmon said. “They are criminals, and we need to deny them the glory of being considered soldiers.”
He believes terrorism should be handled as a law enforcement issue. Last April he was a presenter at a workshop sponsored in Turin, Italy, by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. At the workshop he discussed factors that push Muslim extremists to perpetrate violence.
For his Tuesday talk, Harmon will focus on the three major types of political Islam, the major groups and movements, and assess the threat level they pose to the United States.
He explained that various extremists have their own sets of priorities, including whether they choose to focus on the “near enemy” or the “far enemy.”
“Those concerned with near enemy focus on corrupt Arab and Muslim regimes, such as Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, the Algerian government and the monarchies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia,” Harmon said. “The far enemy is Israel and its ‘big brother,’ the United States. This is one way to divide these groups and assess the risk they pose to us. Al Qaeda obviously focuses on the far enemy, but most of the Sunni groups focus on the near enemy. However, all these groups want to get Israel eventually.”
For all his years of study, Harmon has no quick solutions to the problems of extremism and violence.
“If I think of one, I’ll  let everybody know,” he said.
Originally from the St. Louis area, Harmon has been at PSU for 14 years.
“I don’t get any credit for being an area native if I say I’m from St. Louis,” he said. “I always just say I’m from Missouri.”

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