As Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad (above) was being sentenced to life in prison, he told the judge defiantly: “We do not accept your democracy or your freedom because we already have shariah law and freedom.”
This notion of already possessing shariah law and freedom, rather than fighting to attain those things, offers the West a perfect window to understanding Islamism and the concept of global jihad.
Islamism follows the belief of the “inner perfectibility of history,” as Robert Reilly puts it in The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis. That belief creates a parallel reality inhabited by Islamists. Reilly explains:
“They may seem to live and move in the realm of the real world, but they are already transposed into the second, false reality. When they behave according to its laws–such as in slaughtering innocent people without remorse–others are surprised and disturbed because they do not know the contours of this second reality, which has just been so shockingly imposed on them.”
Shahzad is following the same core beliefs as millions of his fellow Muslims. As he told the judge, he already has shariah and freedom, because he doesn’t consider himself accountable to our laws, morals, or traditions. He has his own. It is critical that the West understand this–Islamists are not looking for inclusion in our society, and so they cannot be bought off with the promise of such.
Islamist luminary Sayyid Qutb called this “a perpetual and permanent war.” Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna characterized it this way: “What I mean with jihad is the duty that will last until the Day of Resurrection.”
That second quote is still somewhat vague on what “jihad” actually is. David Kilcullen, former senior advisor to General David Petraeus and General Stanley McChrystal, offers the clearest definition of the global jihad in his new book Counterinsurgency.
First, Kilcullen defines “insurgency” as “a popular movement that seeks to overthrow the status quo through subversion, political activity, insurrection, armed conflict, and terrorism.”
Insurgents seek to overthrow governing systems from the ground up.
“The jihad, therefore, can be described as a form of globalized insurgency,” Kilcullen writes. “Al-Qaeda and similar groups feed on local grievances, integrate them into broader ideologies, and link disparate conflicts through globalized communications, finances, and technology.”
This understanding of jihad fits neatly with Reilly’s exposition of the parallel reality inhabited by Islamists. Normally, Kilcullen explains, an insurgency operates as a “shadow state” within and against an established state. But a globalized insurgency acts not against a state, but the system of every state. Therefore, it is a virtual state, as well as a “pseudo-state: a false state.”
Looking at the jihad as an insurgency rather than solely a terrorist enterprise more accurately defines the enemy’s strategy, but it also poses a challenge. Insurgency is an issue for the government. But in a globalized insurgency, there is no overall governing authority.
What’s the solution?
“A strategy of disaggregation would seek to dismantle, or break up, the links that allow the jihad to function as a global entity,” Kilcullen proposes. “In this strategy, victory does not demand that we pacify every insurgent theatre from the Philippines to Chechnya. It only demands that we identify, and neutralize, those elements in each theatre that link to the global jihad.”
A plan that addresses not just the acts of Islamist violence but the various links and deeds that feed that violence would deal with a gaping hole in our security mindset. As Andrew McCarthy writes in The Grand Jihad, the West often excuses anything that doesn’t perpetrate horrific violence:
“Just as the Soviet collapse has been a boon for the left, the ferocity and overreach of Muslim terrorists has been a dual boon for Islamism. So atrocious has been the bloodbath wrought by al-Qaeda, its affiliates, and its imitators that it has enabled more methodical Muslim extremists to operate under the radar.”
And it’s important to note that there is no way to opt-out of this engagement; leaving Iraq or Afghanistan will not exclude America or Americans–or anyone, for that matter–from this global insurgency.
“In classical counterinsurgency, the ecosystem was the nation-state. In globalized insurgency, the ecosystem is all of world society,” Kilcullen writes. “Therefore, liberal democracies are inside, not outside, the jihad ecosystem. We are part of the system of global jihad–we provide inputs that sustain the insurgency, we are affected by its boundary interactions and outputs, and we are actors in the broader environment.”
Many have begun to notice. Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Atlanta–a card-carrying member of the ACLU–finally had enough with what McCarthy calls willful blindness, and addressed his synagogue over the High Holidays:
“Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris, fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.”
We cannot avoid our participation, but we can–with a proper understanding of the enemy–weaken and destroy the Islamists’ parallel reality and virtual, false state.
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