I'm sorry, but what about... Iran?
I suppose one could view the world in bold strokes and thus lose proper granularity to make any distinctions, but that would lead to some simplistic view of the world i.e. them against us.
The Iranian fundamentalists are far from the more stringent fundamentalism promoted by say the Salafists, or Egyptian Islamic Jihad, or Muslim Brotherhood etc who would institute a much more strict version of Islam which would be tantamount to a totalitarian form of government. What I believe is found in Iran is closer to the wishes of many Muslim and that is implementation of Sharia.
But even further we can analyze Iranian actions. If Iran were intent on implementing Islamism then why haven't they invaded neighboring countries? I mean terrorists are working hard in all Muslim countries so where are the Iranian jihadists? Ahh .... but you say what about Hamas and Hizbullah. The basic tenet of both (or one depending on how you view them)is anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is apparently an afterthought among some Islamists.
Iran is democratic even though sometimes the issues and candidates are tightly controlled, but it could be favorably compared to other Muslim secularists democratic governments in the region, who practice the same types of restrictions.
The problem with blurry distinctions is eventually we end up grouping/profiling people based on some generic criterion. Thus we would see remarks like say all fundamentalist Muslims are enemies of the state. I suspect this is nothing more than a politically correct back door for racism.
So if you want to put Iran in the same basket as AQ (as a representative with high profile of Islamists) then you have to provide a lot of explaining to make that connection especially when the Iranian "hardliners" have rejected AQ and it's philosophy. But be my guest, as I want to see how you would argue that.
