— In recent months a number of American Muslims have aligned themselves with militant jihadist networks in order to carry out attacks against the U.S. and the West. The latest jihadists include Sharif Mobley, who worked for six years as a laborer at nuclear plants in New Jersey. Mobley was captured in Yemen and taken to a hospital where he proceeded to take a gun away from a security guard and shot two guards. The other jihadist is Colleen R. LaRose, “Jihad Jane,” whose intent was to kill the Swedish artist that caricatured the Prophet Mohammad.

Rick Nelson, the director of the counterterrorism program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, speaking about what is being called the “radicalization” of these American Muslims says that “it's a troubling trend, fed by an ideological claim found over the Web that says the U.S. is at war with Islam.”

Nelson, like presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama have all avoided the truth, which is that we are at war with “militant Islamic jihadists,” sometimes referred to as “radical Islamists,” “Islamic extremists,” or “Islamic terrorists.” When asked who the enemy is, President Obama says “Al Qaeda.” He shuns the terms “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremism.” But that's exactly what we are facing and have been facing for the past three decades.

It was radical Islam when the Hezbollah killed 241 Marines in Beirut in October 1983. It was radical Islam when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. It was radical Islam when hundreds of Israelis were blown apart by Hamas suicide bombers. It was radical Islam that was responsible for the killing of hundreds of Bali vacationers, the bombing of Spanish trains and the suicide bombings of the London tube killing scores of people in July 2005. Radical Islam is responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of civilians in nearly every corner of the globe.

Actually, there is no war against Islam unless one includes Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Lakshar e-Tayba and a multitude of other radical Islamist groups.

The ideas supported by the jihadists didn't just spring form a void, nor are all of them the marginal opinion of a few fanatics. The principle dogmas they assert: That Islam is the one true faith that will dominate the world; that Muslim rulers need to govern by Sharia (Allah's Law) alone; that the Koran and Hadith (Sunnah) contain the whole truth for determining the righteous life; that there is no separation between religion and the rest of life; and that Muslims are in a state of conflict with the unbelievers, have roots in discussions about Islamic law and theology that began soon after the death of Mohammad and that are supported by important segments of the clergy today.  

The constitution of Islam is the biography of Mohammed. The Koran calls Mohammed's life “a beautiful example.” Muslims know this because it is written in the Koran.

Muslims revere Mohammad above all other men. He is the supreme model for human behavior. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr remarks: “It may be said that the Prophet is the perfection of both the norm of the human collectivity and the human individual, the norm for the perfect social life and the prototype and guide for the individual's spiritual life. He is both the Universal Man and the Primordial Man (al-insan al-qadim). As the Universal Man he is the original perfection with respect to which we are decadence and a falling away.” Mohammad initiated militant jihad.

The great medieval theorist of what is now often called “radical Islam,” Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God's entirely and God's word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”

Violent jihad is a constant of Islamic history. Calls for jihad went out in the seventh century against the Christians of Egypt and Syria and the other areas of what is now known as the Muslim world. Such calls sounded innumerable times against the Christians of Europe until 1683.

After that, although jihads became less common, particularly in Europe, at no point did Islamic theology evolve beyond the legal manuals and medieval theorists such as Taymiyya. Jihad remained part of Islamic thought and practice, but as the Islamic world went into economic and cultural decline, so did jihad. Jihad is not a suicide pact; those who fight must have some reasonable chance of success, and such success became less assured as the West gained military predominance.

Still, Indian Muslims declared jihad against their colonial occupiers, and the Ottomans did so against their enemies in Europe as late as 1914. Turkish Muslims proclaimed jihad against the secular state that was ultimately established by Kemal Ataturk. Yasir Arafat and Hamas both called for jihad against Israel, just as Saddam Hussain and Osama bin Laden declared jihad against the United States.

The fact that jihad remains a vital part of Islamic theology is insufficiently appreciated in the west. When modern Muslims like Jaffar Umar Thalib and Osama bin Laden declare jihad, Muslims take them seriously, even if they don't always act upon the call. These men not only bill themselves as mujahedin, warriors of jihad; they are widely seen as just that.

Bin Laden outlined how attacks on America could cease: He says, “There are two solutions to stopping terror attack on America and Americans. One is from our side, and it is to escalate the fighting and killing against you. This is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out…the second solution is from your side. I invite you to embrace Islam.”

Unfortunately, in accordance with Islamic doctrine, jihad is a central duty of every Muslim. Bin Laden is following the Prophet Mohammad, the “supreme model for human behavior,” as other jihadists have done down through the centuries.