Better understanding of Islamist experience needed?

By Clifford D. May

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, a reminder for those who speak for – and to – the American people

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com Nearly ten years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many politicians, diplomats, journalists, and academics remain reluctant even to name America’s enemies. To take but one example: John Brennan, head of the White House homeland-security office, has argued that America is only “at war with al Qaeda” and its closest affiliates.
I understand the impulse to frame the conflict as narrowly as possible. Brennan and others do not want to reinforce al-Qaeda’s message that Muslims from Afghanistan to Iraq to Israel to Paris to Detroit must choose between the umma, the global Islamic community (“Islamic nation” is an equally accurate translation), and the West — to fight for one and against the other.
But can we not say — truthfully and without playing into al-Qaeda’s hands — that there are regimes and groups within the Muslim world that are implacably hostile to the West? Can we not say that they subscribe to a belief system called jihadism? The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus defined jihadism as a religiously inspired ideology built on the teaching “that it is the moral obligation of all Muslims to employ whatever means necessary in order to compel the world’s submission to Islam.”