Daniel Pipes argues, as did TOC’s posts of July 09, 2005 – Tribal Terror?, and July 25, 2005 – Four Aces and a Dupe:
Islamofascista are not killing westerners because of the Palestinians, the Crusades, Afghanistan, Lepanto, Iraq, a genetic predisposition to nihilism, or the resentment of capitalism; the rise of which coincides with the decline, from the 15th century on, of the Caliphate.
The root of an inabilty to compete economically, militarily or ideologically with capitalist societies arises from Islam’s fanatic religious conservatism and the concomitant, profound resistance to change of the 15th Century.
“Islamic economics” struggles with this even today. See also, Islamic Terrorism.
Pipes asks What Do the Terrorists Want?:
…In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and Islamic law, the Shari’a. Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their “real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide ‘caliphate’ founded on Shari’a law.”
Terrorists openly declare this goal. The Islamists who assassinated Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 decorated their holding cages with banners proclaiming the “caliphate or death.” A biography of one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of recent times and an influence on Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam declares that his life “revolved around a single goal, namely the establishment of Allah’s Rule on earth” and restoring the caliphate.
Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that “the pious caliphate will start from Afghanistan.” His chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also dreamed of re-establishing the caliphate, for then, he wrote, “history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world’s Jewish government.” Another Al-Qaeda leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, publishes a magazine that has declared “Due to the blessings of jihad, America’s countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon,” to be followed by the creation of a caliphate.
Emphasis mine. Worth reading entirely.