The Fundamentalist believe the West is corrupt and dying. But, the west, through culture and politics and economics has invaded the Middle East on all fronts It's like you said... this is an affront.
The West is annihilating the traditional Muslim way of life. Democracy, women's rights, equal protection under the law, secular courts, these things are all making headway in the Middle East, due to foriegn influence. Thus far, the traditionalists have been able to keep them at bay, but at the cost of their own effectiveness.
Let me say that again. The traditional forces in the Middle East have traded overall effectiveness for stability. Thus, their nations are weak, backwards, and humiliated. They choose to hold on to certain aspects of traditional society, but they do so in a world that won't wait for them.
Between change, and slow suicide, they chose suicide.
Now, the fundamentalists always believed that the West is weak in certain ways, but dying? Not a chance. They understand that the West is expanding across the world, and it absorbs every culture it comes in contact with. Only the most ancient and self confident, like the Chinese, are able to withstand it, and even they are showing signs of being transformed.
Islamists simply don't have a chance. They hid from the West for what centuries they could, and lashed out when it was feasible, but it's done little more than slow their eventual defeat. They offer very little that the West needs, on a social level, except for a barbaric, militant cult that some embrace only out of blind spite for the West. Islamists may be rushing our gates now, weapons in hand, but it's because they are not long for this world. In another 100 years, Islam in it's present form will not exist. What we are witnessing now is the agonizing spasms of a dying culture too arrogant and too backwards to admit that it's been beaten.
(Granted, that means we may be in for a very violent century.)
My example comes from a Mark Steyn article, but it is a very good one.
He compares the actions of the recent Fox news team that was kidnapped in Gaza and a group of people who were kidnapped by Muslims and Sir Arthur Conan wrote about them.
The Fox news team was threatened with death unless they converted. So, they converted, and when they were released they told everyone they did it under duress.
The 4 that were kidnapped in the Arthur Conan story chose death instead of conversion...why? Even though they were not Christians and in fact stood against what the cross stood for on earth, they believed that if they converted, they would be denying themselves.
Steyn writes about the Fox news "sham" of a conversion: "But that's not how the al-Jazeera audience sees it. If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling —that the west is weak, that there's nothing - no core, no bedrock, nothing it's not willing to trade."
Even if our culture is spreading like wire fire... they believe they will win because we are dying. Steyn sums it up very well when he writes..."It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead."
You seem to suggest if we ride it out for a bloody century, Islam will die of natural causes because the West is strong and transforming societies.
I disagree... I say that Islam did not hide from the West for centuries...It was forced back because it did have the means to militarily compete with the West. Well, that is changing. They have new ways to fight...they are gaining in military power...they have states that will back them with safe haven, give them weapons. Flushed with money, they are acquiring weapons. Not as a last gasp, but because they believe that they can win.
Benjamin Netanyahu said right after 9/11...and I paraphrase. "Right now, the terrorists lack the means but not the will to destroy us. We have the means to destroy them but lack the will. It is a race to see who gets what first."
I believe Bibi...and watching the West since 9/11...the mental gymnastics we go through to justify not defending ourselves shows that Steyn's last statement is true: "A society with nothing to die for is dead already."