For the record, the late Al Qaeda theorist Yussuf al-Ayyeri explains why they hate us in jihadist book-of-the-month-club selection The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad. It’s pretty simple, really: they don’t want to get comfortable. This article by Amir Taheri in New York Post Online Edition: postopinion explains:
What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a “clean battlefield” in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief. This, he labels “secularist democracy.” This threat is “far more dangerous to Islam” than all its predecessors combined. The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy’s “seductive capacities.”
This form of “unbelief” persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the “unalterable laws” promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.
The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to “make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad.” If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims “reluctant to die in martyrdom” in defense of their faith.
So there you have it: to make ourselves safe from the Jihad, we simply have to turn away from prosperity, secularist democracy, and progress. So John Ashcroft really has been right all along, in his own funky little way.
This sounds vaguely familiar as I’m reading Galileo’s Mistake right now. Any widely popular religion can (and will) be upset if their own particular originator’s plan is threatened as the right way.
Honestly, the only difference here is that Islam is late to the game. The Judaic and Christian faiths had their try in getting humans to keep from straying into having thoughts of their own for thousands of years. Galileo wasn’t in trouble because he could see thru a telescope and report on the findings…he got in trouble with the belief that the telescope can tell him more than faith might.
Of course, the “better” religions (or, shall I say, the reigning and vocal heads of those religions) are those who adapt to the progress made by science, political thought, and medicine.