Muscatine

Both liberals and conservatives assume that the Islamist holy war against the
West revolves solely around Westerners themselves, rather than having something
to do with Islam itself. For example, people on the anti-war left believe that
al Qaeda attacked the U.S. because the latter was imperialist, racist, or
insufficiently responsive to the needs of the Third-World poor. By contrast, the
pro-war right (including former President Bush) maintains that the Islamists
hate Americans for their freedoms, opportunities, and overall success as a
society.

A very different perspective on the Islamist mindset is offered
by Mary Habeck, a military historian at Yale University. Habeck holds 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 within paradigms provided by the stages of
Muhammed’s political and military career. According to Habeck, the internal
logic of Islam, and not any particular provocation, real or imagined, by some
outside 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 any 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—before the Lesser Unbelief. And the third method is to fight
the Apostates (false Muslims) first, and then the other Unbelievers.