RADICAL ISLAMISM TERRORIST MODEL 101

While professing unwavering faith in a transcendent deity, radical Islam is a militant, politically activist ideology, whose ultimate goal is to create a worldwide community, or caliphate, of Muslim believers. Determined to achieve this new world order by any means necessary, including violence and mass murder, radical Islam is characterised by its contempt for the beliefs, practices, and symbols of other religious traditions. This intolerant creed is cited by Islamists as the philosophical justification for their terrorism.

Radical Islam’s kinship with terrorism, and its willingness to use violence as a means to its ultimate ends, is clearly spelled out in a training manual produced by the radical Islamist terror group al Quaeda.

 “ An Islamic government would never be established except by the bomb and rifle. Islam does not coincide or make a truce with unbelief, but rather confront it. The confrontation that Islam calls for does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun. The young came to prepare themselves for Jihad (holy war), commanded by the majestic Allah’s order in the holy Koran”.

 “The goals of radical Islamists are simple: Islam must have power in this world. It is the true religion, the religion of God and its truth is manifest in its power. When Muslims believed they were powerful. Their power has been lost in modern times because Islam has been abandoned by many Muslims, who have reverted to the condition that preceded God’s revelation to the Prophet Muhammad. But if Muslims now return to original Islam, they can preserve and even restore their power. That return, to be effective, must be comprehensive; Islam provides the one and only solution to all questions in this world, from public policy to private conduct. It is not merely a religion, in the Western sense of a system of belief in God. It possesses an immutable law, revealed by God that deals with every aspect of belief about the organization of the state and the world. This law and ideology can only be implemented thru the establishment of a truly Islamic state, under the sovereignty of God. The empowerment of Islam, which is God’s plan for mankind, is a sacred end”.

A very different perspective on the Islamist mindset is that radical Muslims base their war against non-Muslims on the Islamic sacred writings, particularly the Sira, which, unlike the Koran, tells the story of the Prophet Muhammed’s life in chronological sequence. Using Muhammed as their model, the jihadists think and act with paradigms provided by the stages of Muhammed’s political and military power. According to Mary Habeck, a military historian at Yale University, the internal logic of Islam, and not any particular provocation, real or imagined, by some outside the power, is the key to understanding why the jihadists do what they do. While specific actions by the West might further enrage jihadists, their fundamental strategic and military decisions are not determined by anything done by the United States, Europe, or other perceived enemy of Islam, but rather by tenets of itself that call for the killing of infidels.

Radical Islamists tend to gravitate toward three major methods of achieving their ultimate objective. The first is to fight the Near Enemy prior to fighting the Far Enemy. The Near Enemy is anyone inside Islamic lands, whether it is an occupier or someone who has taken away territory that used to be Islamic. The second method is to fight the Greater Unbelief- the major enemy, which today is the United States or France before the Lesser Unbelief. And the third method is to fight the Apostates (false Muslims) first, and then the other Unbelievers.

“The way the jihadists understand the term is in keeping with its usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history.... The goal is boldly offensive, and its ultimate intent is nothing less than to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world.  Today, jihad is the world’s foremost source of terrorism, inspiring a worldwide campaign of violence by self-proclaimed jihadist groups."