Yes, Islam has been retreating since the Westphalia Treaty and the rise of nation states in the West. At first, it was unconcerned. It had been turned back, but it could live with it. After all, it had Istanbul. Vienna would have been nice...but...
Then something very upsetting happened. The French invaded Egypt. And there was nothing the Muslims could to about it. It took the British to get the French out, but the British didn't go away...they stayed... and now we have a problem.
At first the answer wasn't Islam. It was Arab Nationalism. And Arab Nationalism was the key up until the First Gulf War.
Along side Arab Nationalism was Islamic fundamentalism. Not as strong, but there. This was the return to that I mentioned in my last post.The Muslims looked around and said... hey, this humiliation is the judgment of Allah on the way we live, and how we believe. We aren't doing the will of Allah because we aren't fighting jihad.
The moderate Arab leaders tried to tell the Reagan administration that they creating a monster by their support of the muhjahadeen. Why? Because it was the same monster they were fighting. But, now flushed with victory and armed with fighters and money... the threat that started with the Egyptian Brotherhood blossomed into other organizations backed by states.
When Iraq was defeated in the Gulf War... Arab nationalism was discarded as the means to reestablish Arab dominance and fundamentalism was embraced. Not in desperation, but as revelation... see, here is the answer to not only the corruption in our lives but to why we are humiliated by the West.
The Fundamentalist believe the West is corrupt and dying. But, the west, through culture and politics and economics has invaded the Middle East on all fronts It's like you said... this is an affront.
So the fight is being waged against two enemies. Against the West and against the corrupt leadership in Middle East countries that allow the pollution from the West to continue. This is the religious component. If we are to be what Allah said, then here's what we need to do.
The Qu'ran says... and we get jihad - a political blueprint to take over the world. Now, I said that like the Brain would say it to Pinkey...but bottom line: Islam is to dominate not be dominated (politically, religiously, culturally, economically, etc)... And Afghanistan showed the terrorists that they could win against one of the vanguards of the "West". Now, they believe they can win against the other.
The Fundamentalist believe the West is corrupt and dying. But, the west, through culture and politics and economics has invaded the Middle East on all fronts It's like you said... this is an affront.
The West is annihilating the traditional Muslim way of life. Democracy, women's rights, equal protection under the law, secular courts, these things are all making headway in the Middle East, due to foriegn influence. Thus far, the traditionalists have been able to keep them at bay, but at the cost of their own effectiveness.
Let me say that again. The traditional forces in the Middle East have traded overall effectiveness for stability. Thus, their nations are weak, backwards, and humiliated. They choose to hold on to certain aspects of traditional society, but they do so in a world that won't wait for them.
Between change, and slow suicide, they chose suicide.
Now, the fundamentalists always believed that the West is weak in certain ways, but dying? Not a chance. They understand that the West is expanding across the world, and it absorbs every culture it comes in contact with. Only the most ancient and self confident, like the Chinese, are able to withstand it, and even they are showing signs of being transformed.
Islamists simply don't have a chance. They hid from the West for what centuries they could, and lashed out when it was feasible, but it's done little more than slow their eventual defeat. They offer very little that the West needs, on a social level, except for a barbaric, militant cult that some embrace only out of blind spite for the West. Islamists may be rushing our gates now, weapons in hand, but it's because they are not long for this world. In another 100 years, Islam in it's present form will not exist. What we are witnessing now is the agonizing spasms of a dying culture too arrogant and too backwards to admit that it's been beaten.
(Granted, that means we may be in for a very violent century.)