Hamas must be defeated, but that's just Step 1 in a much wider religious war

After the Islamist terrorist group Hamas launched a horrific genocidal attack on the Jewish people and the state of Israel, killing more than 30 Americans as well, many are asking “why?”

But now as pro-jihadi protests rage across the Middle East and Europe, it has become clear. This is about a global religious war waged by Islamists with caliphate ambitions.

These Islamists divide the world into the “Land of Islam” (Dar-Al-Islam) and “Land of War” (Dar Al-Harb).

They are reopening and redeclaring the regional and global triangular battle between Islamist movements, Arab dictators and the West that hatched in 2011.

Chaos, death and disruption are the kindling for jihadi global growth as they seek realization of the caliphate and Dar-Al-Islam.

What do you mean by Islamist?

As an American Muslim, defining the term “Islamist” is critical. This term does not define every adherent to the Islamic faith.

Islamists are theocrats who demand the establishment of Islamic states based in shariah law (Islamic jurisprudence). Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood and Khomeinist types, hatched Hamas, al-Qaida, Hezbollah and ISIS, to name a few of thousands of terror groups.

Among the roughly 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, there is a brewing civil war within the House of Islam. Unfortunately, the Islamists — whether violent or non-violent — are the dominant side due to massive financing, media propaganda and control of Islamic education by some tribes in Persian Gulf states whose medieval interpretations would be but a footnote in history if not for their wealth.

The rest of the world’s Muslims divide up into many more secular political movements, some of which, like the women’s revolution in Iran, demand a modern Western separation of mosque and state.

Why did Hamas attack Israel now?

So, why is violence erupting now, in 2023?

The fecklessness and weakness of the Biden administration’s appeasement policies across the region, from Hamas to Iran and Afghanistan, gave jihadis the green light they needed to make their global religious war relevant again.

They see America as no longer having the will to defend our ally Israel or defend freedom.

But the overarching question remains: Why at all?

Why the mission against Israel risking certain destruction by Israeli power?

Israel's response to Hamas: Has been far more cruel

The answer is that the Palestinian Islamists were becoming increasingly irrelevant. The recent evil acts of war, aggression and terror brought them back to the forefront and center of global Islamist leadership.

Previously, they were rendered irrelevant by the Abraham Accords Declaration, by populist revolutions in many Muslim majority nations and their populist rejection of Islamism.

The West must understand and finally develop a strategy against this, joining forces with the likes of our Muslim Reform Movement to counter their global jihad from within.

We're not just fighting Hamas, but an idea

Islamists and Marxists have joined forces to try and destroy us from within, so why shouldn’t we deploy the same against them?

This is as much an ideological war as it is a kinetic one — or it should be.

While we must first defeat Hamas once and for all, if we don’t have an active and frontal anti-Islamist counter-information arm to combat Islamist supremacy and jihad from within, it will come back and grow even stronger, with or without Hamas.

It is not just Hamas or ISIS or al-Qaida that we are fighting but an entire Marxist-jihadi anti-Western ideology of evil.

It is long overdue for us to develop a lasting strategy against global jihad and global Islamism domestically and abroad. Jihadis wait out our fickle quixotic election cycles and return again and again to slaughter innocents and rekindle their mass hysteria.

So, yes, we should execute and win this war right away, in the short term, against Hamas and against the jihadi enemies of civilization.

But, for the love of God and civilization, we must finally develop a potent strategy against Islamism and its red-green axis of Marxism and political Islam.

It is time to anchor the West, from America to Israel, against all forms of political Islamism and defeat this toxic ideology once and for all.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is a candidate for Congressional District 4, a primary care physician, U.S. Navy veteran and founder of the Muslim Reform Movement. Reach him at zuhdi@zliberty.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why did Hamas attack Israel now? It's much wider than you think