Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
In Lebanon and Palestine, very, very few of those who voted for Hizbullah or Hamas bought into the notion of establishing a global Caliphate (indeed, in my experience even many Hamas cadres don't).
Of course. But if you'd ask them if they'd like to see a unified Islam, I suspect most would say yes.

These are all sets of grievances that have been mobilized in the past by a broad array of ideological messages, from Arab nationalism (in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq), communism (among some in Iraq and Lebanon), the nationalist new left (ditto), or tribalism (notably in Afghanistan).
What makes the jihadist ideology powerful is that it is able to point to these motivations and say, "See--you tried all those things and where did it get you?"

..although Saudi Arabia, Iran, and (at times) Sudan, could also make claims to being an "islamic state" and that hasn't made much difference. Moreover, Afghanistan is generally considered such a peripheral backwater of the Muslim world that (Pakistani Pashtuns aside), very few Muslims pay it much attention unless it has Soviet or US troops in it..
The jihadists say most conclusively that those were not, in fact, true Islamic states. AQ in particular said that Afghanistan was the only one.