The Legacy of Jihad

Very often I find a reference to an article that I bookmark with the intention of reading later--in this case, eleven months later. The article is in the November 2006 Policy Review by the always thought-provoking Lee Harris, reviewing the book, The Legacy of Jihad, by Andrew Bostom. The money quote:

For the Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun, the conquest by the warlike Arabs of more advanced yet weak and decadent empires represented a deep historical pattern. When a civilization becomes too sedentary, too decadent, too forgetful of the struggle for existence that originally put it on top, it becomes ripe for conquest by those who are still warlike and driven by a fanatical sense of mission. Thus, he noted, superior wealth and superior civilization were no guarantee that those who possessed them could hold on to them in the face of small but determined bands of fanatics united by a sense of what he called “group feeling.” In short, for Ibn Khaldun, jihad can be devastatingly effective even when it is waged against a civilization that, in material terms, is far in advance of the jihadists.