Let's Be Sure We Understand the Conflict

I continue to be amused at how the language of Marxist-Leninist "class struggle" has become such an integral part of the political analysis of Americans -- even the Journal.

Commenting on an op-ed column by Frederick Kagan ("Our Friends in Baghdad," Dec. 21), Steven Ross ("Well-Heeled Terrorists Responded to U.S. Presence," letters, Dec. 27) borrows -- pretty much whole-cloth -- the language of "class struggle" as a means to explain just what it is that is motivating the world's Islamists. But while he is correct in pointing out that it is not the Muslim poor who account for the strength of the Islamists, he too falls into the trap of seeing this "struggle" in terms of a conflict between social and economic classes.

This is not a Western-style conflict, born of the lessons of the West. It is a "struggle" to regain and expand the strength of Islam, to resurrect dar al Islam, the Khilafah, and the Shariah as the foundations of the governance of Islam, and ensure that Western influences are completely eliminated from Islam. It is a struggle both within Islam for what we in the West often refer to as "hearts and minds" and it is a struggle against dar al Harb -- the infidels -- to eliminate the growing influence of Western ideas -- such as the "class struggle."

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