A key Pentagon intelligence agency involved in homeland security that started to delve into Islam's holy texts to answer whether Islam is being radicalized by the terrorists or is already radical, found that the terrorists for the most part are following a war-fighting doctrine articulated through Muhammad in the Quran, elaborated on in the hadiths, codified in Islamic or sharia law.

Political Islam wages an ideological battle against the non-Islamic world at the tactical, operational and strategic level. The response of the U.S.A. was focused at the tactical and operation level, leaving the strategic level - Islam - unaddressed. One major reason, the briefing states, is government-wide "indecision [over] whether Islam is radical or being radicalized."

"Strategic themes suggest Islam is radical by nature," according to the briefing, which goes on to cite the 26 chapters of the Quran dealing with violent jihad and the examples of the Muslim prophet, who it says sponsored "terror and slaughter" against unbelievers.

"Muhammad's behaviors today would be defined as radical," the defense document says, and Muslims today are commanded by their "militant" holy book to follow his example. It adds: Western leaders can no longer afford to overlook the "cult characteristics of Islam."

It also ties Muslim charity to war. Zakat, the alms-giving pillar of Islam, is described in the briefing as "an asymmetrical war-fighting funding mechanism." Which in English translates to: combat support under the guise of tithing. Of the eight obligatory categories of disbursement of Muslim charitable donations, it notes that two are for funding jihad, or holy war. Indeed, authorities have traced millions of dollars received by major jihadi terror groups like Hamas and al-Qaida back to Saudi and other foreign Isamic charities and also U.S. Muslim charities, such as the Holy Land Foundation.

As we have seen in P.1, according to the Quran and Islam, jihad is not something a Muslim can opt out of. It demands able-bodied believers join the fight. Those unable - women and the elderly - are not exempt; they must give "asylum and aid" (Surah 8:74) to those who do fight the unbelievers in the cause of Allah.

In analyzing the threat on the domestic front, the Pentagon briefing draws perhaps its most disturbing conclusions. It argues the U.S. has not suffered from scattered insurgent attacks -- as opposed to the concentrated and catastrophic attack by al-Qaida on 9-11 - in large part because it has a relatively small Muslim population. But that could change as the Muslim minority grows and gains more influence.
The internal document explains that Islam divides offensive jihad into a "three-phase attack strategy" for gaining control of lands for Allah. The first phase is the "Meccan," or weakened, period, whereby a small Muslim minority asserts itself through largely peaceful and political measures involving Islamic NGOs - such as the Islamic Society of North America, which investigators say has its roots in the militant Muslim Brotherhood, and Muslim pressure groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders are on record expressing their desire to Islamize America.

In the second "preparation" phase, a "reasonably influential" Muslim minority starts to turn more militant. The briefing uses Britain and the Netherlands as examples.

And in the final jihad period, or "Medina Stage," a large minority uses its strength of numbers and power to rise up against the majority, as Muslim youth recently demonstrated in terrorizing France, the Pentagon paper notes.

The Pentagon briefing further continues by describing how, when the Arab Islamic conquests had reached as far as France to the west and India to the east in the eighth century A.D./e.E. The inhabitants of this empire saw what no previous Arab had ever witnessed: an undaunted, excessive, and expansive power that stretched over three continents. From Bedouins to sophisticated colonialists in less than a hundred years, the settlers coming from the peninsula were as proud as Roman citizens at the peak of their empire, or as the British during the period when the sun never set over their world empire. As outlined in the last chapter, the Arab settlers who reached these remote lands, along with the Arabized population, were convinced that it was offered to them as a reward for their adherence to the new religion and their strict obedience to its tenets, as taught by the founding elite since the early days of Medina. A citizen of the caliphate in the ninth century lived in the greatest superpower of all time. The Abbasid caliphate not only sat on three continents on the largest land­mass of any known empire, but it also was the culmination of technological and scientific power. During the days of Caliph Harun al Rashid, Baghdad was New York and Washington combined. An unparalleled power emanated from it, forcing foreign leaders, such as Charlemagne, to sign peace and cooperation treaties with al Rashid and his successors. From the barefoot Arabian nomads who roamed the deserts for thousands of years to the CEO of the largest and most powerful empire of all times, in about a century, the history of the Arabs was aggrandized endlessly. And to ground these achievements in permanent mecha­nisms and convince the populace to remain faithful to the state, the religious clerics linked the successes and the conquests to the level of adherence to the letter of the religious codes. The more the masses and their leaders abided by the strict law revealed in the seventh century by the founding fathers, or the salaf, the more Allah would grant victory and prosperity; officials of the state and clerics constantly affirmed this belief.

But, by the end of the eleventh century, the world of imperial Islam was transformed. After centuries of having intimidated all its neighbors, from Byzantium to Rome, into a defensive posture, the caliphate was suddenly the target of devastating invasions anddestructions. The peoples of the Arab Is­lamic empire had lived under the assumption that no force on Earth could defeat the Muslim annies strategically, to reverse the fatah, and, worse, to penetrate deep inside the dar el Islam. The dominant belief that cemented the popular trust in the commander of the believers was that all conquests, and subsequently all jihads, were not only blessed by the divine but ultimately the will of Allah. For, according to the official version of the state (dawla), without God's intervention, no real victory could have been possible. How could the tribes of Arabia have subdued Byzantium and the Persian empires combined, and reached lands as distant as France and India, without the consent and the command of the heavens?

The Ottomans in turn waged not only jihad, but also conquests (fatah)-the ultimate expression of jihad. But, the similarities between the Arab and Ottoman jihads are striking. Both groups started originally as nomadic tribes from remote and marginal regions. Both converted to Islam before they undertook their expansion and hence acted under the leadership of spiritual and military leaders simultaneously. Both invaded areas on three continents tenfold the size oftheir birthplace and populations. Hence as long as the Turkish sultans were marching into the dar el harb, conquering lands, subduing monarchs, and stretching Sharia laws deep into the kufr (infidel) zone, the jihadic currents relied on the state to push forward the agenda of the founding fathers. In many ways the Ottomans fostered the Arab acceptance of their rule by showing a willingness to expand the borders of the caliphate into remote frontiers.

The Arab fatah stopped at the edges of Asia Minor, unable to conquer Constantinople for centuries. Often in twenty-first-century chat rooms mod­ern-day jihadists discuss the matter as if it were of great current importance. "Why did the Arab Caliphate stop the fatah in northern Syria and not defeat the Rum (Byzantines) all the way to their capital?" asked one. (This debate over ancient history seemes as urgent as the contemporary one of striking American forces in the Sunni triangle of Iraq.)

Thus when the Ot­toman Sultans took the sword of jihad and resumed the conquest into the land of Kufr, Allah the merciful sent his angels again to slaughter the enemy’s. When the Ottomans marched forward under the banner of the Sharia and jihad, the more fundamentalist quarters of the empire praised the sultans. But as the rulers of Istanbul (the renamed Constantinople) commenced to look toward significant reforms of their institutions, the reforms were regarded as a diver­sion from the true path. This was the history of struggle within the Ottoman Empire between the reformists and the radicals. But as long as the Turkish sul­tanate held the power of the Islamic caliphate, the radical school had to accept the rules coming from the Sublime Porte. The emperors were either inclined to modernize and reform or to return to the old narrow conditions of the past, but one fact superceded everything: There was a high authority in the Muslim world that decided all global matters of war and peace and ruled over all sub­jects of the Islamic state. Even if fundamentalist factions started to emerge in the beginning of the eighteenth century and criticized the Porte, the sultan re­mained, until the last hour of the caliphate, the supreme guide of the believers. Under the Ottoman Empire and even outside the sultanate, jihadism attempted to push the agenda of conquests and regression into strict religious behavior. But Istanbul, as the only heir to Baghdad and Damascus, stayed the final course of world Islamic policies until a secular power dismissed the last successor of the Prophet in 1924.

 The Islamists and jihadists as a whole have outlined three major objectives since the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate. These objectives include tahrir: LIBERATION, tawheed:  UNIFICATION, and khilafa: CALIPHATE the Pentagon document proceeds.

Jihadists want to liberate all Muslim lands from non-Muslim powers. The question is: How does one determine what a "Muslim land" is? Many theories exist, but one is prevalent: Muslim lands consist of all lands that were conquered by the legitimate caliphate or surrendered to it, or whose population had at some time submitted to the caliphate. The Islamists/jihadist logic is pretty cohesive. Whatever land that came formally under the Islamic state is Islamic. Whatever population that is in a position to rule itself that came to join the Islamic state brings its lands with it. For modern-day jihadists, Israel, Kashmir, Spain, and Chechnya are Muslim lands that will have to be "liberated" at some point in time. It is the historic and religious duty of all able Muslims to offer and sacrifice for the battles of liberation. In the absence of a high authority that could regulate war and peace within Islam or promote reforms, the demand for the "liberation of Muslim lands" by Islamists, Salafi, and jihadists cannot and will not stop.

After the land is liberated, or while the process is taking place, all Muslim coun­tries must be reunified within common borders. Islamists/ jihadists want to cancel the frontiers between the "fake entities" of all Muslim countries, starting with the Arabian Peninsula and the greater Middle East.

 The goal is to dismantle the actual nation-states of Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, all the way to Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkmenistan, and reshape the civilizational borders of the Muslim world. This vision is drawn from what was the widening frontier of the fatah through the centuries. Later on, the Taliban, al Qaeda, Sudan's Turabi, Algeria's Salafis, and theoretically the Wahabis of Arabia would be projected into a world state. But this unification is not because of economics or other incentives; it is sought as the fulfillment of a command issued by the early founders of the religion-always, of course, according to the interpretations of the jihadists.

Once the land is freed from the infidels and unified, the most important task to reestablish the caliphate. The proponents of this aim emerged before an4 after the Ottoman collapse. Already in the nineteenth century, a movement of Salafis had depicted the Turkish institution as apostate and wanted to reestablish the older, purer, and more legitimate khilafa (caliphate). But with the de dine and dismantling of the Istanbul sultanate, all Salafis today have on objective: to reinstate it. The reestablishment of the succession will sign the resumption of the external jihad (i.e., toward the dar el harb) and bring about the return of fatah.

Finally the paper distinguishes between three major groupings of Islamist/ jihadists: WAHABIST, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, KHUMAINI (SHI’ITE).

By the early nineteenth century, the al Saud had become the leaders of Wahabism and waged a series of attacks against Ottoman power and their suzerain monarchs, including, in the beginning of the twentieth century, Sherif Hussein, the Hashemite of Mecca. These tensions between the legal Islamic state, embodied worldwide by Istanbul and locally in Arabia by the governor of Mecca, and the Wahabis in Nejd existed until the 1920s. The Wahabis-the Taliban of the nineteenth century-waited patiently for their moment. Note that the actual mainstream Muslim power was not necessarily Salafi or Wahabi. The Ottomans were embarking on a reform process, but were not always successful: Even the Hashemites of the Hejaz (the province centered on Mecca and Medina) resisted them. In 1914, Turkey aligned itself with Germany and Austria in the world war.

Sherif Hussein instead linked up with the British. Istanbul declared a jihad against the allies, and Hussein declared his own jihad against the Ottomans. The Wahabis stayed out of the conflict. The Ottomans were defeated and the Arabs of the Hashemite Hijaz province moved north to take over Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, leaving the peninsula an open field for al Saud. In 1924, Kemal Mustafa Ataturk declared the Republic of Turkey and abolished the caliphate, beheading an institution that had lasted more than thirteen centuries. Before the Hashemites secured their position in the Fertile Crescent, the Saudi Wa­habis attacked Sherif Hussein's forces in the Hejaz and occupied Mecca and Medina. Since the mid-1920s, they have declared most of Arabia as a Saudi Wahabi monarchy. This entity became the first Salafi regime in modern history. With the emergence of the Saudi power out of the peninsula and the fall of the Ottoman Islamic legal entity, the protectors of the two shrines of Islam would project themselves as the most revered and respected moral and theological au­thority in the entire Muslim world. Geopolitical events helped the Saudis to survive the first half of the twentieth century before ascending to a world posi­tion; from that launch pad, they have been able to unleash waves of Wahabism, the last-slammed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001, before spreading from Afghanistan to the Iraqi Sunni triangle.

During World War II, Wahabism did not lean toward one side or the other. Strategically, Wahabi thinking knew that unless the British infidel were totally defeated by the Nazis, there was no realistic chance that they would evacuate the region. They were right. While a number of nationalist Arab leaders in Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt threw their lot in with Germany, the Saudi dy­nasty was wise. It ana­lyzes the global balance of power in terms of the situation, interest, and relative strength of the umma (nation). Hence it does not let itself be dragged into sideshow battles, limited arenas, and short-term confrontation.

The Muslim Brotherhood (Muslim Brothers), a second wave of Salafi jihadists came out of Egypt, and believed in using radical means to reestablish the Islamic state. I already commented on this group during the recent elections in Egypt Dec. 2005.

During World War II, the Brotherhood hoped the Nazis would win. After Israel was established, the Brotherhood, unlike most Arab regimes, preferred to gain support within the Arab world rather than to support what it perceived as a coalition of failing Arab regimes. To the Brotherhood, the war against the Jews and Israel cannot be won with un-Islamic (or not sufficiently Islamic) governments. During the cold war, their priority-like the Wahabis'-was to fight and defeat communism first before facing off with the capitalists. The Ikhwan opened chapters in most Arab and Middle Eastern countries as well as within emigre communities in the West. Competing with the Wahabis, they would become the backbone of most Islamist and jihadist organizations of the future. Behind the dominant and most extremist organizations of the 1980s and the 1990s lies the shadow, if not the umbilical link, of the Brotherhood. This rock­solid network generated waves of militants, one decade after another. Over generations they came to penetrate and influence the complex educational system in the region, as well as its religious and media apparatuses. Above all, they would eventually provide masterminds of terrorism to jihadist movements, in­cluding al Qaeda's number two man, Ayman Thawahiri.

The Wahabis and the Brotherhood are the pillars of Sunni Salafism. They intertwined, merging at times but competing fiercely at other times. They both produced offshoots, including leading jihad groups from Algeria to the Philippines. But the shattering of the caliphate not only released sub currents among the Sunni radicals; it also allowed non-Sunni Muslims to emerge for the first time in history as a jihadi power.

Pressing always forward to spread the Wahabist doctrine worldwide, the clerics intensified their activities in several Muslim countries using all the revenues and resources of a suddenly rich country. Mosques, religious centers, libraries, hospitals, and other projects were developed in many Muslim countries. The other side of the coin was Wa­habi/ Salafi education. With each socioeconomic initiative overseas, an Islamic fundamentalist investment was made. Year after year, the Wahabi influ­ence penetrated deeper and deeper into Muslim societies in various areas and under various regimes. Saudi clerics were able to influence their colleagues as far as Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan, and even the Soviet Union. The supreme privilege of being the administrators of Mecca and Medina and thus of the hajj (pilgrimage) process gave the kingdom's clerics even greater influence.

By the end of the cold war, pro­jihadist organizations had filled up universities and other institutions or built their own and had created a vast infrastructure within the emigre communities. Wahabism produced the religious schools; the religious schools produced the jihadists. Among them was Osama bin Laden and the nineteen perpetrators of September 11.

Among the most powerful extensions of the Muslim Brotherhood are those in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Algeria, and Jordan. Plus offshoots are Hamas among the Palestinians; the National Islamic Front of Hassan Turabi in Sudan; the Front de Salut Islamique in Algeria; the Gamaat Islamiya and IslamicJihad in Egypt; as well as many similar groups in the region and around the world, including south Asia's Jamaat Islami and Abu Sayyaf.

During the 1980’s, they waged local jihads in multiple battlefields around the globe, at times joined "national" struggles against foreign "infidel" forces, such as the Soviets in Afghanistan or the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, and took part in civil wars against kafir enclaves in southern Sudan and Lebanon.

Finally, throughout history, many Shiite leaders and communities took part in jihads led by the Sunnis. In some cases, local Shiia dynasties, such as the Fatimids in Egypt, waged their own forms of jihad.

After overthrowing the westernized secular Shah of Iran, In 1979 however, a network of Shi­ite clerics led by Ruhollah Khumeini grabbed power and declared the Is­lamic Republic of Iran. In fact the Shiite fundamentalists in the late 1970’s attracted significant support not only from Shiia in Iran, Lebanon, and Arabia, but also political sympathy from Sunni Arabs such as the Palestine Liberation Organi­zation and secular nationalists such as the Baath of Syria.

The Khumeini revolution opened a space for Shiia radical politics to rise. It equipped the group with a new Islamist ideology by installing a vilayet el faqih regime. Translated as "mandate of the religious scholar," it meant that Shiites and Muslims in general would have to follow the wisest imam while awaiting the return of an absent religious messiah, the Mahdi.

Clashing simultaneously against the two infidel powers of the Soviet Union and the United States, the Iranian regime appeared more politically and ideologically correct in the eyes of the radicalized Muslim masses of the 1980s. It opposed all infidels. Tehran engaged American power head-on in many ways and battlefields, especially in Lebanon with the U.S. Marines barracks bombing in 1983. Furthermore, Iranian Jihad created a regional tool for local battle­fields against Israel: Hezbollah. Directly supported by Iran and protected by Syria (which was ruled by a Shiia offshoot, the Alawites), Hezbollah became the main Shiia competitor to the Salafijihadist forces in the region. However, with time, the two international networks of jihadism-Sunni and Shiite ­would converge on one path: relentless war against the United States.

But while the Salafis could struggle and recruit wherever Sunni communi­ties existed, the Shiia Islamists were limited to Iran and a few other countries in the Middle East where this minority branch of Islam flourished. As soon as [mam Khumeini took power in Tehran, the global drive of his regime was to build a superpower within the frontiers of Iran and assist the small Shiite communities in developing their own militant networks. Hence, the two arms of the Khumeinist jihad, as of 1979, were the arming of Iran as a greater power in the region and the spawning of terror networks, as in the case of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In conclusion the document notes that unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam advocates expansion by force. The final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, is to conquer the world in the name of Islam. The defense briefing adds that Islam is also unique in classifying unbelievers as "standing enemies against whom it is legitimate to wage war."

Right now political leaders don't understand the true nature of the threat, it says, because the intelligence community has yet to educate them. They still think Muslim terrorists, even suicide bombers, are mindless "criminals" motivated by "hatred of our freedoms," rather than religious zealots motivated by their faith. And as a result, we have no real strategic plan for winning a war against jihadists.

The hardest part of formulating a strategic response to the threat is defining Islam as a political and military enemy. "Most don't realize we are in a war of survival - a war that is going to continue for decades," a Pentagon spokesman warned.

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