War on Islam controversy

War on Islam or war against Islam is a term used to describe a concerted effort to harm, weaken or annihilate the societal system of Islam, using military, economic, social and cultural means, or means invading and interfering in Islamic countries under the pretext of the war on terror, or using the media to create a negative stereotype about Islam. The alleged perpetrators are non-Muslims, particularly the Western world and "false Muslims", in collusion with political actors in the Western world. While the themes of the "War against Islam" mostly concern general issues of societal transformations in modernization and secularization as well as current international power politics, the Crusades are often given as its starting point.

The phrase or similar phrases have been used by Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb,^[1][2] Ayatollah Khomeini,^[3] Anwar al-Awlaki,^[4][5] Osama bin Laden,^[6] Chechen militant Dokka Umarov,^[7][8] cleric Anjem Choudary,^[9] and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan.^[10] It has also been used in propaganda by al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.^[11] The English-language political neologism of "War on Islam" was coined in Islamist discourse in the 1990s and popularized as a conspiracy theory only after 2001.^[12]

Jonathan Schanzer has argued that the historical Muslim indifference to the West turned to "alarmed dislike" with the beginning of Western military superiority in the 17th century. However, with the end of the era of Western colonialism, rage against non-Muslims and the governments of Muslim-majority countries stems not from alleged non-Muslim aggression and enmity, but allegedly from frustration over the unrelenting encroachment of mostly Western culture, technology, economies, and from a yearning for a "return to the glorious days when Islam reigned supreme."^[13]