Jihad
The main object of Jihad in Islam is defense of Islam against those aggressively opposing and attacking it. Therefore in order to engage in Jihad, the Muslim must believe that Islam is being attacked. Even though the very countries they believe are attacking Islam are the countries in which there is greater religious freedom than anywhere else in the world and certainly not countries that attack any religion, they cannot cognitively move on to Jihad without first labeling the country against which the Jihad will be executed as being the aggressor and attacker. This is the basis for the Muslim claim that they are victims. They are always crying that they are victims; they and their beliefs being attacked. And as they and Islam are attacked they must counter attack with Jihad.
How is it possible that they can hold the belief of being attacked when in fact there is no attack? To understand this, we must enter the mind of the Islamic Jihadist. There we will find the basis of the belief, a basis which is from the Koran itself. The logic goes like this. Any person who is a non-believer in Islam is an infidel. And an infidel is one who is against Islam. If infidels are against Islam then it is Islamic proper to make Jihad against them.
This is the Islamic religious rationale from the victimization perspective. But there is another Islamic religious rationale. That is the rationale to follow in the steps of the Islamic prophet Mohammed. This is what Mohammed is quoted as saying by Ibn 'Umar:
I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle. ( Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 2, Hadith Number 24)
And a similar statement is narrated by Abu Huraira:
I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say,None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,and whoever says,None has the right to be worshipped but Allahhis life and property will be saved by me except for Islamic law, and his accounts will be with Allah, (either to punish him or to forgive him.) (Sahih Bukahari, Volume 4, Book 52, Hadith Number 196)
And consistent with this are verses from the Koran such as
So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush,... (Sura 9:5)
When you encounter the infidels, strike off their heads until you have made a great slaughter among them, and of the rest make fast the fetters. (Sura 47.4)
The Muslim commentators teach that these verses do not pertain only to an event in the seventh century, but that these verses are instructive and an obligation on Muslims for all times.
From this we can infer that Jihad is the political struggle to power and dominance. As Daniel Pipes has stated, Jihad means the religiously
legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims.
It is this striving for power, land, expansion and conquest, that hides behind the perceived victimization and the religious rationale in an attempt make the Jihad conquest legitimate. What is interesting is that the victimization rationale is plainly false. Review some history. Were the countries in the Arabian peninsula victimizing Mulsims before their conquest in the seventh century? Were the Zoroastrians of Persia persecuting the Muslims in the seventh century? Were the countries from Afghanistan to Spain all victimizing Muslims before their Islamic conquest? Wait! Before their Islamic conquest those countries had few if any Muslims. And what about India. Were there victimized Muslims in India before Islam jihad reached India and destroyed thousands of Hindu temples and killed millions of Hindus? At that time India had no Muslims. What about Africa before Islam reached Africa. Were the indigenous people in Africa persecuting the Muslims? What about the current carnage in Sudan? How many millions of non-Muslims have the Muslims killed in Sudan? Not one million, but more than two million. Were the Christians the Muslims murdered in Sudan victimizing the Muslims? What about Algeria which was already Muslim and in which the Muslims killed each other, 100,000 of them, because of Jihad of one militant Islam aggressing against moderate Islam.
Finally, look what is happening is Somalia. The Islamic Jihadists Wahhabis of al-Shabab are destroying Christian shrines and churches and the graves of Muslim Sufis who they regard as un_Islamic. Read the public statement of spokesman Hassan Yaqub:
We are a chosen lot by Allah to try and correct the mystics of the people and guide them. We have a responsibility to the people to guard the people against all evil deeds.
This is our conclusion. The victimization of Muslims by and large did not happen. Rather it is the other way around: Militant Jihad Muslims victimizing the non-Muslims and even other Muslims under the pretext of Jihad. But this Jihad is just the base drive for dominance: power, land, expansion, and conquest. When successful it results in a murderous ruthless barbaric totalitarian political regime in a rogue state.
And this is the situation between Israel and the Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbullah, the militant Islamic Jihadists who are aggressing against Israel. The politicians imagine that somehow a Palestinian state will end the Islamic Jihadists terrorism. The politicians of Israel, Europe, and the US have their heads in the ground like an ostreich. Indeed, a Palestinian state must be established. But to think that this will end terrorism! Rather such a Palestinian state will become a militant Palestinian state and execute a state Jihad against Israel. There are only three logical outcomes: a continual state of terrorism and/or war, punctuated by temporary periods of truce, or the Islamic Jihadists will destroy and eliminate Israel, or Israel will destroy and eliminate the Islamic Jihadists.