Scialabba quotes Michael Scheuer:
Bin Laden and most militant Islamists [are] motivated by . . . their hatred for a few, specific US policies and actions they believe are damaging—and threatening to destroy—the things they love. Theirs is a war against a specific target and for specific, limited purposes. While they will use whatever weapon comes to hand—including weapons of mass destruction—their goal is not to wipe out our secular democracy, but to deter us by military means from attacking the things they love.
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Isn't there also something about restoring the umma and reversing the historic tragedy of Andalusia? Frankly, I'm no expert on the subject, but I think this analysis is largely bunk (except maybe insofar as one is restricting onself specifically to attacks on "US targets"). Jihadi ideology has a lot more to it. As Jason Burke argues in Al-Qaeda, The True Story of Radical Islam, AQ has a worldview of cosmological struggle that is only peripherally about real world concerns (though it is rooted in them). A martyrdom operation is about proving your faith and getting into heaven, not about accomplishing a political goal.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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