Any analysis of jihad and jihadism risks offending Muslims, especially when the issues are addressed frankly. Islamists take advantage of this sensitivity;
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they use the accusation of Islamophobia to mobilize their followers and si-lence their critics. They also seize any pretext to prevent vigorous and candid debate about jihadism and its roots in po liti cal Islam. This is what happened to the pope, and it will continue to happen. In short, complaints of Western Islamophobia have been a most useful instrument in the hands of the Is-lamists and a basic part of their war of ideas. Jihadists defame any linking of Islamism with terrorism as a “war on Islam.” It is unfortunate that there are serious Muslims— not only Islamists— who voice this perception.
The birth of jihadism coincides with the birth of Islamism. The found er of the Movement of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al- Banna, set out all of jihadism’s essential features.25 The claim of a return of history, the reli-gionization of politics and the politicization of religion, the use of collective memories of early Islamic conquests26 to revive the Islamic dream of a
“remaking of the world” 27 through jihad, and the claim that Islamist doc-trine represents the authentic jihad can all be found in al- Banna’s writings.
His decisive 1930 publication Risalat al- Djihad laid the foundations for the jihadist- Islamist ideology. Moreover, al- Banna practiced what he preached.
Today, there is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood that pretends to have abandoned jihadist warfare and instead engages in the more promising war of ideas. This venture, which has proved more successful than the resort to violence, blurs the distinction between jihadism and institutional Islamism.
None of these issues are well understood in the West, which explains the lack of appropriate policies for dealing with Islamism. This will have to change. Recently, in a development most Eu ro pe ans ignore or deny, Eu rope has also seen a religionization of social confl icts. Peter Neumann writes that the connection between jihad and jihadism matters to the rising and intensifying Muslim immigration to Eu rope.28 The Muslim Brothers have established a following among the Eu ro pe an diaspora of Islam.
Western politicians need to avoid the mistakes of the second Bush ad-ministration and of American conservatives in the post- Bush era, and must beware of raising general suspicions against Muslims. Disregarding the dif-ference between Islamism and Islam only validates the followers of the jihadist ideology in their allegation that Islam and its people are being
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targeted by the West. This is why a successful strategy against terrorism requires Muslim- Western cooperation.
Unfortunately, one of the least helpful groups in this regard has been the po liti cal left. If jihadism is a revolutionary ideology of the religious right, why does the left support it? It is not possible to prove that the found-ers of Islamist ideology have ever read Marx or Lenin, but a close reading of the Islamists’ prose strongly suggests some level of familiarity. The Islamist use of Marxist- Leninist terms shows an acquaintance with the vocabulary of Marxist secular internationalism, even if Islamist internationalism is reli-gious and emerges from a politicization of traditional Islamic universalism.
One may read Sayyid Qutb as having adopted the Marxist- Leninist idea of world revolution and applied it to jihad. Qutb writes: “Islam pursues a com-plete and comprehensive thawrah (revolution). . . . Jihad is an obligation of Muslims to carry out this revolution to establish hakimiyyat Allah (God’s rule on the entire globe). . . . It follows that jihad is an idea of thawrah alamiyyah (world revolution). . . . In this understanding, Islam is a permanent jihad for a remaking of the world along the nizam salih ( just system).29
In Marxist thought the vehicle of revolution is the proletariat. This revolu-tion did not happen during Marx’s lifetime. Lenin replaced the proletariat with the party of revolutionary cadres. Al- Banna and Qutb also speak of a permanent revolution that will realize Islamist goals. Unlike the futuristic Marxist utopia of a classless free society, the Islamist utopia is backward- oriented: it fi rst constructs an imaginary “Islamic state” and projects it, in a new reading of Islamic history, into the past. In this reading the fi rst Is-lamic state was allegedly established in Medina 622. But the Prophet in his hadiths never used the term “dawla” (state). Second, the restoration of this
“Islamic state” (despite some Western misconceptions, Islamists do not speak of a restoration of the caliphate) is to be accomplished by a revolution that restores Islam’s historic glory. This vision is constructed out of collective memories and identity politics. The Islamist internationalism it refl ects could be a religious version of secular Marxist internationalism. Islamists argue that Muslims have fallen into jahilliyya, ignorance, and lack po liti cal consciousness and so need a surrogate to act on behalf of the besieged and
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oppressed umma: these are the jihadist revolutionaries. Their role is that of the Leninist party which speaks on behalf of the dormant proletariat. They act in the belief that they are “the true believers.” 30