The Myth of Modern Jihad

“Do we inflate the menace of Islamic Jihad in order to justify the war in Afghanistan?” Robert Wright wonders if our simplification of Muslim motives squeezes relevant facts out of picture. “It’s only natural to attribute to your enemy more cohesion and menace than is in order. We used to do this with communism, and now we do it with radical Islam — and radical Muslims, for their part, do it with us. It’s a temptation we all have to fight. Maybe if we fought it as hard as we fight other enemies, we’d have fewer of them,” says Wright.