A reminder
Lee Harris, whom we have cited here previously:
Muslim jihad followed logically from the principle that all men should live in Muslim societies. Like the French revolutionaries, Muslims wished to liberate humanity, and they were aware that they could do this only by violently overthrowing the status quo and disregarding any claims to legitimacy based on mere custom or tradition.
Another way of putting this is that the concept of jihad does not fit the clash-of-civilizations paradigm that is so often used to describe the current world situation. In this model, each player will try to improve his position within the framework of a settled order, but none will seek to demolish and annihilate the framework. A nation will go to war with another to achieve certain political goals that cannot otherwise be achieved, as Clausewitz argued.
But no nation will embark on a course not merely of conquering another nation, but of transforming its culture into a replica of its own. Yet this is precisely the goal of jihad: to destroy the status quo of those outside the ambit of Islam in order to expand its realm — to create a realm in which Muslim culture completely transforms the old cultural traditions, as occurred repeatedly during those periods of Muslim expansion. Islam did not conquer territories to create a colonial empire, but to expand its own domain. It did not want subjects; it wanted converts.
Just so.