Since jihadists are living and operating here among us, and some of them are refugees, I bring you a report on a new book by Laurent Murawiec, The Mind of Jihad. Michael Ledeen reviews it on National Review. He says the author
immersed himself not only in the sacred texts of Islam but also in the richly variegated speeches, writings, and actions of its most extremist practitioners: the jihadis waging war against us.
He candidly admits that it was not easy, that many of his initial ideas turned out to be wrong, and that his current understanding of “the mind of jihad” surprises him. This understanding holds that the current doctrine is far more than the resuscitation of medieval commandments, and in fact has a lot to do with modern European and Soviet totalitarianism.
The book explains how the jihadist strain of Islam went from being a religious ideology to a political one.
“Islam addresses its call for effecting (its) program of destruction and reconstruction, revolution and reform not to just one nation, but to all humanity.”
David Horowitz has covered some of the same territory in his Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, explaining the left’s attraction to radical Islam. He emphasizes the left’s side of the alliance, while Murawiec writes about the Islamic side.
Ledeen says:
As a result of these European and Soviet influences, the jihadis are inspired by a real lust for blood, and are members of a cult of death.
As an example he quotes an anecdote about the 1971 assassination of the Jordanian Prime Minister that will make your toes curl:
“Five . . . shots, fired at point-blank range. . . . He staggered back against the shattered swing doors . . . and he fell dying among the shards of glass on the marble floor. As he lay there, one of his killers bent over and lapped the blood that poured from his wounds.”
Sheesh. Communists are bloodthirsty, but not so literally.