Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
Actually the genuinely barren, hazy nature of most radical irhabi literature makes clear that few of them have any real idea of what a true Islamic state would actually look like. Even comparatively sophisticated Muslim Brotherhood ideologues tend to get very unspecific when they have to detail exactly what they are fighting for as to opposed to what they are against, which they are very good at. Radical irhabism/jihadism is a bit different from Soviet or Chinese Communism in that it is principally a revolutionary doctrine, proclaiming that so-and-so is against Islam, against Muslims, out to destroy Islam, steal oil, oppress, etc. but getting quite sketchy even when dreaming their ideal state, much less the nuts-and-bolts details. Even the Maoists had land reform. A better analogue for irhabism/jihadism is radical anarchism, IMO.
I'd again commend Habeck's Knowing the Enemy. It is true that the jihadists are not Leninists in terms of having a concrete alternative blueprint. But that's because they believe that the alternative has already been spelled out. For them to offer a blueprint for a better society would be arrogance since, from their perspective, God has already provided such a blueprint.

In a way, that makes them a more difficult opponent in the war of ideas. With communists, we could eventually say, "See what life under communism is like. Is that what you want?" But since the jihadists say that their model was the first few decades after Mohammed and to deprecate that era is to "insult" Islam, we are not able to legitimize it.

Ironically, I think in the long term it would have served our cause better if we had landed in Afghanistan and crushed the existing AQ infrastructure, but left the Taliban in control. Then we would have actually had an instance of an "Islamic" state to show to any Muslims attracted by the idea.

(And, by the way, I'm using the word "jihadist" despite have had looong conservations with Jim Guirard about it. I personally think that most Muslims understand the difference between "jihadi"--which most of them consider themselves--and "jihadist" which is the militant mutation of the concept).