Jihad is not interested in acquiring land, or money, or even control, which faith understands to be illusory. What these extremists want is submission. To their book or to their sword.
In fact, jihad is interested in acquiring land, all the land of the Earth for re-establishment of the glorious Caliphate…from Pakistan/Afghanistan, Iraq/Mesopotamia, in fact, all the middle and far east…Indonesia, the Phillipines…Europe, North America, Australia…potential recruits are schooled and brainwashed.
Violent or radical jihad (as well as “soft” jihad promulgated by organizations every day, like CAIR) is all about control.
Islam itself is all about control, where, these days, you might have to get a ruling from the Ayatollah as to the simplest questions of everyday life. In western countries, one of the biggest initial aims of soft jihad is substituting Islamic law for civil law in matters of family life and marriage. This is just a small chink in a very long campaign to, ultimately, replace decadent western culture altogether.
The west’s weak position in the face of the goals of jihad isn’t so much the decline in religion as it is the decline in steadfastness and determination of “western” peoples. We’re soft and self-indulgent, and jihadists recognize what vulnerable targets we are. Add in the desire to accommodate and political correctness (especially prevalent in Britain it seems) and we’re virtual pushovers.
I would argue that “the supernatural” in Islam is part of the brainwashing to attract recruits. I don’t believe that jihadist leaders and recruiters really believe in their version of heaven, with the black eyed, re-hymenating virgins reclining on jeweled couches besides rivers of wine…but that this picture is a tool of manipulation to attract repressed, unhappy and not very smart potential suicide bombers, and others, to jihad.
In other words, a tool of exploitation.
I don’t really believe that individuals like bin Laden and Zawahiri and so many others (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) really are dumb enough to think “God” is on their side. I seem them as individuals who are, essentially, outlaws, who have schooled themselves in hatred, are on power trips and, literally, have nothing to lose.
