Jihadist Ideology Watch

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Abu Bakar Bashir, leader of the Indonesian al Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah, leaves no room for ambiguity as to why jihadists wage war:

The only model to follow is pure Islam. Because Islam in its original form was tough and hard, not weak and pliable. Islam is fixed, stable, ordered and disciplined, and so are Muslims.

If we return to the real practice of true Islam we would be much stronger and that is when the kafirs will fear us. That is why we need to uphold the Shariah and return to real Islam. But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam.

Why do we Muslims have to learn from them? Islam is perfect, there is nothing to be added or changed. We have shown that Islam can rule the world perfectly for 14 centuries, and during this time of Muslim power we did not borrow ideas like democracy from others, so why do we need to learn democracy from them now? As long as Muslims were confident they could not be defeated, but now we are just puppets.

This is why we are calling for the upholding of the Shariah here in Indonesia. We demand an Islamic state, and not some form of Islamisation of society. We want the state to be Islamic, with Islamic leaders who have the courage and will to implement the Shariah in total. There is no other way.


(link via Tim Blair)


Those who believe that Islamist hatred of US and Western policies is based on anything like rational political analysis should read this enlightening piece from Der Spiegel. Keep in mind that these are Muslims living in Germany, not the Sunni Triangle or remote Waziristan:

This just in: The Lebanese men suspected of having deposited bombs on German trains last month were hired hands -- in the employ of the German government itself.

That, at least, is what one 27-year-old from Saudi Arabia believes. "It's all a Protestant crusade," the man explains. "All of northern Germany is Protestant, isn't it? And so is President Bush." Then the man launches into a melange of confusing arguments and historical facts. The bubonic plague, Martin Luther and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl all make a cameo. It's all connected somehow, the man is sure of it.

The young Saudi Arabian's views may make little sense from a Western point of view, but you can meet him and talk to him at a street corner in the middle of Hamburg, right by the central station. Foreigners from all over the world live in this neighborhood, called St. Georg, and a large number of them are Muslim. Several mosques have been built in the neighborhood. Many nearby stores carry no alcohol -- but they do have electronic memory aides for Koran students on offer.


(link via LGF)


Finally, Mike Palmer notes the disturbing content of a web site for young Muslims in Canada:

Imagine if in the midst of the Second World War an organization of German students had a website with a section on the works of German “revival” writers, including Schiller, Goethe, Kant, Hitler, Goebbels, and Julius Striker? Would it be unreasonable to suspect that some of the students were Nazis?


If it seems like I blog repeatedly about the jihadist worldview, it's because the evidence of the true nature of that ideology is overwhelming, yet all too many choose to ignore it or wish it away. The jihadists seek our eventual destruction, and we ignore them at our peril.