It looks like war. It smells, tastes and even sounds like war. By ?war? I don?t mean a ?war on terror?, but a world war pitting civilizations against one another. It is a war of blocs, values against values, visions fighting visions, and beneath all the lofty pretense, very practical interests lurk.



Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and large parts of the Islamic community, or nation (ummah), have declared war against the West, against the Christian United States and its allies, against Israel and Jews throughout the world. To those Muslims participating in or supporting this campaign, it is a war with multiple purposes: 1) driving the West and the United States out of the Islamic sphere; 2) destroying Israel and ruining Jewish life worldwide; 3) overthrowing Muslim governments deemed corrupt and tools of the ?Jews and Crusaders?; and 4) establishing a unified Islamist regime. This new Caliphate is to span the lands of the ummah under a single leader and regime devoted to the application of strict Islamic law. And there is a purpose number 5, as well - turning the rest of the world subservient and/or converting its populations to Islam.



People will read these purposes and consider the assertion that they exist to be exaggeration or fantasy. Such reactions should be followed by readings in the theology of the various Islamic groups that form the war alliance against the infidel.



The world is at war. The war is highly mobile, and the tactics and strategy of the Muslim side are flexible, as is traditionally the case when war is declared against non-Muslims. Nearly everything is permitted, because it is Jihad, a struggle for Islam?s survival and expansion. So, terror is allowed, terror is desirable, because it demoralizes the enemy and pushes him into desperation and appeasement. It accelerates the progress of the war and the likelihood of attaining the only acceptable outcome ? triumph.



If triumph is attainable, then defeat is preferable to accommodation or surrender.



It is a war for the one true way, for a faith and values and a civilization. In this view, no compromise is possible, because the enemy is declared to be evil ? and because compromise is alien to Jihadis.



The war is fought in different ?spaces? and formats. It is fought everywhere a non-Islamic political entity exists on the border with Islam ? Israel, India, Indonesia, Sudan, Nigeria, Chechnya and the Balkans. It is fought in the belly of the enemy, New York, with appalling cruelty and strategic daring. The war is fought through the media, in financial markets, on the Internet. It is carried on in schools and universities, in departments of history, politics and religion.



The war is fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, places where Muslims once ruled and no longer do (or rule with the assent of the American patron). These are focal points, as well as territories of the ummah that have been ?invaded? by the infidel. The allied presence in these places represents an affront to Islamic sensibilities, but moreover, they are wounds in the body of Islam. Lands within Dar al-Islam, the Islamic sphere, can not be relinquished according to mainstream Islamic teaching. The war is fought in and around Israel, another infidel invasion of the Islamic sphere, another claim to sovereignty by a non-people.



Within this sphere, only Muslims may rule. No non-Muslim sovereignty can exist, or is valid, or has any organic basis. Removing such presences and sovereignties is incumbent upon the sincere jihadi. Since the members of the Muslim alliance despise Israel and regard the United States as a tool of ?the Jews?, the war is extended to Jewish communities worldwide. The U.S. is seen acting as it does because of Jewish influence; the ?Zionist lobby? assures that American policy will serve Israel. More than that, the Jews who ?run? America and support Israel do these things specifically to attack and weaken Islam. Attacks on Jewish targets everywhere is then justified - indeed, mandated.



This logic is extended to the existence of regimes such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Jordan, Egypt and others. The Islamist core of the Muslim alliance sees these governments as tools and lackeys of the West. This translates into puppets of the ?Jews and Crusaders.? Such regimes compromise Islamic values, sell off ?Islamic? assets (oil) for material gain and power, fail to enforce true Islamic law or values among their subjects, and more. They are seen as harlots, as oppressors of true Muslims, as practical heretics. For by compromising Islamic ways and values, they defy Muhammad?s message and rebuke both the Prophet and Allah.



The self-ascribed purity of the jihadis is such that official Saudi contempt for the West and the United States, its funding of Al-Qaeda and Wahhabi religious schools internationally, and its white-hot hatred of Israel don?t count. Whatever ?testifying? value these attitudes and policies might hold is cancelled by the princes? debauchery and profiting from the production and sale of oil to the West. They are fakes, and they must be overthrown. Witness the recent series of attacks directed against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.



The child of Saudi Wahhabi theology and philosophy, Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, has turned on his parent and means to kill them. There is nothing the Saudi ruling family can offer Bin Laden and his people except surrender, abdication and repentance. This is the hatred of the faithful for those who purport to carry the flame, but instead let it burn down and die.



The regime to replace the Saudis will not, however, be a Saudi regime. Instead, the intention is to establish a modern Caliphate, a pan-Arab, pan-Islamic state ruled by Islamists (Al-Qaeda or others), using Islamic law based on the Koran. Islam is based on the ummah, the community of Muslims who live by their faith. For the Islamists who are the core of this struggle, that means pure devotion, rejection of Western ways, a strict hierarchy, with a leadership fortified by loyal mullahs, and in complete control of the mechanisms of state power.



It is key that the ?state? to be created is meant to be pan-Islamic, spanning the enormous geography of the ummah. Nationalism as conceived by Westerners carries no validity in this view, for it chops up the ummah ? a natural and indivisible entity ? into artificial entities. The very (current) existence of such entities is to Islamists proof that Muslims have lost their way and adopted Western concepts of how to organize a society. Even more insidious, it is proof of the Jewish/Crusader/Western/American plot to carve up the Muslim world and keep it from its full and natural glory.



It sounds like madness to Western ears that the catalysts of war on the Muslim side would aspire to create a Caliphate, in the process tearing down decades-old state structures throughout the Islamic countries. Yet, this is their stated aspiration and they have been shown sincere in the formulation and execution of their plans so far.



Beyond this, the Islamists mean to turn the world Islamic. They intend to use terror, psychological warfare and economic sabotage against the West to achieve their goals. There exists another weapon, the demographic one. Muslim immigrants in Europe and elsewhere are part of a policy of populate-and-convert. The Islamists mean to exploit the Achilles? heel of democracies (one man/one vote) through immigration and baby-making.



This is to be supplemented with carefully crafted efforts to convince Westerners ? many of whom are alienated from their own heritages ? of the value and truth of Islam. In their eyes, Islam is the one true faith, absolute and universal, to be shared with all of humanity. Once the Caliphate is established, the practical physical weight of Islam will add momentum to the global campaign of Islamicization.



Speaking to Muslim leaders at a Ramadan dinner at the White House recently, Mr. Bush answered a question about why Americans think Muslims are terrorists this way: "That?s not what Americans think. Americans think terrorists are evil people who have hijacked a great religion."



Hopefully, that statement reflected the last vestiges of political correctness in the face of hard reality. Otherwise, the United States can not possibly claim to be the leader of the war against Islamism and the Muslim masses that support it.