Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

So while the likes of bin Laden and Moussaoui may insist that the holy jihad is motivated by the desire to spread sharia throughout the world, to erase individual freedom, and to kill, convert, or subjugate infidels, the Western leftist is constrained to rationalize that they are saying such things only because they have been hurt by capitalism and American imperialism. As David Horowitz points out, the leftist holds the Marxist perspective that religion is nothing more than a thought structure rooted in suffering under capitalism. Once the oppression stops, the believer assumes, the Islamist conceptions of Allah and jihad (which the believer privately considers ridiculous but would never dare say so in public) will simply disappear. Believers, therefore, inevitably deny the Islamic dimension that the terrorists themselves insist is their impetus for terror.