Jihad Jane

[tequila]

Something has been floating around in the back of my mind which I thought I would toss out. Did the early Arab / Muslim expansion, say 620-720ce ever attack and win against an internally strong state? Certainly the Byzantines were in major problems in the areas that the Arabs overran and, I believe although I'm not sure, that the Persians were in a longish standing civil war as well.

So if the foundational narrative of Islam is centered around only attacking areas with weak states, wouldn't that imply that there is a propensity for their modern day wannabes, AQ in particular, to attempt to reconstruct a similar situation in the present?

What an odd question.

Did the British Empire ever conquer an internally strong state?

Can you provide any evidence that the "foundational narrative of Islam" advocates attacking only weak "states"?

Also, how do the 9/11 attacks and the emphasis by al-Zawahiri and bin Laden on fighting the "far enemy" fit into your thesis?

[marct]

Hi Tequila,

What an odd question.

I agree, it is an odd question .

Did the British Empire ever conquer an internally strong state?

Actually, yes, several of them. You have to understand, and I should have made it clear in my initial post, that by "internally strong" I am not solely referring to military power; I am talking more about how cohesive the social structures of the state are and a low level of internal dissent.

Can you provide any evidence that the "foundational narrative of Islam" advocates attacking only weak "states"?

Hmmm, I'm not saying that the foundation narrative advocates attacking weak states, only that the states that were attacked were weak. When they ran up against internally strong "states", they got the snot kicked out of them - at least during the first hundred or so years of the expansion of Islam.

Also, how do the 9/11 attacks and the emphasis by al-Zawahiri and bin Laden on fighting the "far enemy" fit into your thesis?

Honestly, I wouldn't call it a thesis or even an hypothesis: it's just an idea that's floating around looking for plausibility indicators. As to how these particular instances would fit, that's actually pretty simple. Pastoralist groups tend to do more raids than any other group and, culturally, tend to think in terms of rapid assault, high mobility in rough terrain, and rapid dispersal - hit and run tactics in other words, followed by massive bragging to "prove" how "great" they are. The 9/11 attacks and many of their other attacks fit this model quite well.

The early conquests of Egypt, Syria, etc. wouldn't have worked at all if there hadn't been a very large segment of the populace that was being systematically and officially oppressed by the central government (i.e. the Copts and the Monophysites) - i.e an internally "weak" state.

Anyway, as I said, it's more of an idea looking for plausibility indicators .