Today seems like a good day to cover a little of the history of Islamic Totalitarianism and understand clearly "why they hate us". A lot of this comes from Paul Berman's book, Terror and Liberalism. Go there if you want to read up on the details.

Wahhabism is a fundamentalist Islamic sect that believes in strict adherence to the Koran and Sharia Law. It grew up in the 18th century in the middle east, but was mostly practiced in Saudi Arabia. Sayyed Qutb was a religious philosopher and writer born in Egypt in 1906. He received a religious education and then a secular education in Cairo and then he travelled in the United States, where he got a master's degree from the Colorado State College of Education. He returned to Egypt and became involved with the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1954, the Brotherhood was involved in an attempt to assassinate Nasser and Qutb found himself in prison.

There, Qutb had ample time to work out his religious and political philosophy. Berman has closely studied Qutb's works, especially his In the Shade of the Koran, which is his most important work. Qutb looked at the Islamic world and saw failure. How could it be that Islamic societies weren't a success? After all, they were following the Holy Prophet. Or were they? Qutb detected many bad influences. European colonialism had spread all sorts of liberal (small L — not Democrats — think "progressive") ideas in the middle east and these ideas were leading people away from the proper practice of Islam. Looking into history, Qutb developed a theory.

The Jews had had their chance to follow the prophet Jesus, but they chose not to. They had had a chance to follow the prophet Muhammad, but they chose not to. This made them a deginerate people. They had forsaken the prophets and no longer served Allah properly. This gave them no right to any future existence. They could and should be exterminated when the chance came. The Christians had properly followed Jesus, their prophet, but something had happened to them. During the scientific revolution that had followed the Renaissance, they had allowed themselves a duality of thought: in one part of their brains they believed in Jesus and God, but in another part they believed in the false god Science. This duality had driven the West insane. Qutb had seen it with his own eyes in America. Democracy, the idea that people would make their own laws, had flowed from this insanity and was illegitimate: only God's laws are legitimate.

This insanity and liberal thought of the West had infected Islamic states and this infection was the reason for their failure. The only hope for Islam was a return to strict Sharia Law and the complete repudiation of the West and their liberalism. Once Islam was cured of its Western infections, it would be strong and could spread to the rest of the world — as it must if it was going to be true to Allah.

Qutb had a following of disciples, including his brother Muhammad Qutb. They received his writings and became ardent followers of his thougtht. Qutb was executed in 1966 and his followers fled to Saudi Arabia. There, they found the teachings of Wahhabism a good match for the teachings of Qutb and they infected Wahhabism with Qutb's teachings. Qutb's brother became a professor of Islamic studies and one of Qutb's disciples, Ayman Zawahiri, eventually became the mentor of Osama bin Laden.

From this tiny nucleus, an organization grew which would eventually be called al Qaeda.

Now, to return to our original question: why do they hate us? The answer is simple: because we are infidels who are keeping Islam from reaching its true heights and taking over the world. Our liberal thought corrupts Islam and causes it to fail. Our separation of church and state is morally illegitimate and corrupt. It is the duty of proper Muslims to battle the West. First, to return the middle eastern countries to Sharia Law and religious rule, then to spread Islam to every corner of the globe.

You see, it's a lot more fundamental and serious than a bunch of UN resolutions or economic development grants to middle eastern countries. It's not about left-right politics and it's not about US policy or Israel. As far as the Wahhabists are concerned, they are fighting for their souls and for Islam. Western liberal ideas of freedom, such as the freedom not to be Islamic or the freedom of people to make their own laws, are the absolute enemy of Islam in their eyes. When George Bush or Tony Blair frame the debate in terms of "values", they aren't making political statements, they are saying the simple truth. We in the West believe in things that are, as far as the Wahhabists and al Qaeda are concerned, a danger to their very souls. They can't tolerate a world that has our liberal ideas in it.

This small core of fundamentalists is working to take over the Islamic world and then the larger world. They don't see themselves as villans and they don't see the people they kill in their bombings and murders as "innocent". To them, none of us in the West are innocent. Every single one of us is a threat to Islam. There are Muslims who aren't with them; in fact, most Muslims aren't followers of these extreme ideas. Most Germans probably weren't believers in all of Hitler's lunacy, either and it's certain that most Russians didn't believe in Stalin's crazy idea. It is possible for a fanatical core to take over a whole people and whip them into a frenzy of hatred — we know this from example.

Our best weapon is the one they fear most: free, open, secular societies. Our ideas are our best weapons. The idea of democracy is a hundred times more powerful than an atomic bomb or a load of sarin gas. We have to spread our ideas they way they would like to spread that sarin gas. For them, it's a battle to the death and we had better come to take it just as seriously as they do if we want to survive.

Update: A good take on the roots of Islamic political theory here.

Update: Here's an excellent article about Qutb in the Smithsonian Magazine. Clearly, his hatred of America was based on delusional fanatacism.

Update: And here you have it in the words of a former Jihadi:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.
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For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

Why is it that so many in the west can't simply take the Jihadis at their word. They are gunning for us because of our progressive views. They don't want free, open, liberal societies because they prevent Islam from taking over the world.