'Don't blame the West for holy war to conquer world under Islam' say experts and scholars

The 'root causes' of Islamist terrorism do not lie in poverty or western imperialism, but an age old conflict between reason and revelation.


Los Angelenos commemorate the jihadist attacks on America of September 11th.

Robert Sibley, a senior writer, presents analysis in The Ottawa Citizen,  Jan 3, 2011.

As political theorist Barry Cooper argues in his book, New Political Religions, or, An Analysis of Modern Terrorism, the Islamists, like the Nazis and Communists, are motivated more by a "disease of the spirit" than materialist aspirations.

... They imagine Islam spreading across the globe and the establishment of a worldwide caliphate based on shariah law. They see themselves empowered by Allah to bring about this new world order by destroying a civilization they regard as spiritually empty. Thus, Islamism constitutes a political religion of apocalyptic proportions.

They ultimately seek the transformation of the West to accommodate Islam. Chandra Muzaffar, a widely respected Malaysian Islamic scholar, writing in a 2006 book, The New Voices of Islam, captures this spiritual aspiration: "Islam and the post-Enlightenment secular West are diametrically opposed to one another.  Muslims will then realize that unless they transform the secular world of the West, that vision of justice embodied in the Koran will never become a reality."

The challenge for Islamists, obviously, is whether they can achieve that transformation better through demographic domination over the next few decades or through violence.

The challenge for Westerners, perhaps not so obviously, is whether they will awaken in time from their multicultural slumbers to protect their cultural heritage and avoid, possibly, a new dark age.

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