How the Iraq War United Radical Islam  Islam expert Michael
Sells analyzes global Islam in light of the Madrid bombings.
BY: Interview by Deborah Caldwell  With the latest world events
--fighting in Fallujah, gun battles in southern Thailand, and an
attack on the diplomatic quarter of Damascus--attention is
turning even more intently to radical Islam. In March, after the
Madrid train bombings, Beliefnet talked with Michael Sells, a
renowned comparative religions scholar whose specialty is Saudi
Salafism, also known as Wahhabism, about the state of play in
global Islam and terrorism. We are reprinting it today because
his comments are, if anything, more accurate now than they were
a few weeks ago.  What does this mean for the landscape of
worldwide Islam?  If it's true that this was an Islamic radical
group with ties to Al Qaeda, then it seems to be another act of
an organized anti-Western group that has shifted now from the
jihad of the Taliban centered around Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to
an international war a