Al Monitor quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Senior Fellow H.A. Hellyer on the rhetoric toward Islam of current Republican Presidential candidates:
“The ideological component is important and vital, to be sure — but to look at it alone is to miss a large number of factors, which are also important,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington and the Royal United Services Institute in London. “Muslim communities at large are not attracted to [IS] ideology — but large parts of them are likely to have sympathy for grievances such as the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians, and the Assad regime’s brutal policies in Syria. Denying that those grievances are actually important won’t help anyone in the counterterrorism struggle.”