Voices of Jihad - RAND Corporation

CHAPTER OnE
Introduction
In the 20th century, the West confronted three totalitarian revolutionary movements:
nazism, communism, and fascism. Now the world is under assault from a fourth such
movement whose members operate under many labels—Islamic terrorists or extremists,
Salafi militants, Islamo-Fascists, and jihadis, to name a few. In this book, I use the
term jihadi, because the movement is focused on carrying out “holy war,” which is
one of the meanings of jihad. 1
The four movements share an important characteristic: Their adherents go to
great lengths to explain what they stand for and what they intend to do. Nazism followed
the course laid out in Hitler’s Mein Kampf; the Bolsheviks pursued the dreams
of Marx and Engels and the plans of Lenin; fascism was fed by more than a decade
of editorials by Benito Mussolini in his newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia (“The People of
Italy”) 2 before he came to power. Interestingly, the societies targeted by these movements
paid little heed to their murderous blueprints until late in the movements’
development.
Before 9/11, the jihadis, who avowedly seek the destruction of Western democracy
and the conversion of the world to their concept of Islam, were also given scant
attention, although they had widely broadcast their intentions and had carried out
numerous terrorist acts. Since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.,
jihadis have redoubled their outreach efforts, increasingly exploiting the Internet to
propagate their vision of the world, their interpretation of Islam, their version of the
history of the Middle East, their grievances, their rationale for terror, their strategy,
and even their tactics.
It can be argued that jihadism is more difficult for Americans to fathom than the
earlier totalitarian movements, which originated in Europe, because jihad comes out
of a culture largely unfamiliar to us and does not speak with a single voice. To bridge
this gap in understanding, much has been written by analysts of the jihadi move-
1 The literal definition of jihad is “struggle in the way of God.” For a fuller description of various meanings of
jihad, see pp. 5–7 and 79.
2 Il Popolo d’Italia was founded by Mussolini and was published from November 15, 1914, through July 24, 1943.
Its masthead bore the motto “A revolution is an idea that has found bayonets.”
1