Terror attacks are symbolic

One reason why I probably can never be part of an academic community is due to my desire to not associate with idiots who can so wrapped up in their ideology than they can't think rationally.

Let me give you an example:

Waleed Aly, lecturer in the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash University, explains away the terror attacks at Mumbai:

(M)uch Islamist terrorism in recent years has been part of a cycle of violence with Hindu nationalist militants. The Mumbai bombings of 1993, for example, followed swiftly after the demolition of the Babri Mosque and anti-Muslim violence by Hindu militants. But hanging over every Islamist act of violence has been one loaded word: Kashmir.... As a Muslim majority territory, it most logically belongs to Pakistan…

Precisely what Israel has to do with Kashmir is not abundantly clear… And it is here (in the singling out of Jews and Westerners), rather than in the particular methods of violence, that we may discern the impact of al-Qaeda, not as an organisation, but as a symbolic ideological force. Its most significant contribution has not been mass death, but a new way of formulating militant politics that transcends the local and parochial, and imbues it with a global resonance. So, to take an example, the brutalising of Muslims in Kashmir may no longer be understood as a problem that begins and ends with India. It may now be constructed as part of a broader, more global conspiracy, spearheaded by the US.

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Nuts! I think he had me at "symbolic force". As I read the rest of the article, I felt a strong need to use my foot to make resonance with the bugger's head.