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hopeful way forward. The intention isn’t to relativize violent extremism, but to understand its moral appeal as well as its usualness in the sweep of human evolution and history, so that we may better compete against it.
What’s wrong with current thinking about the causes of jihad and martyrdom? What motivations are being overlooked or ignored? What else could be done to reverse the tide? A good part of this work will respond to such questions. During the Cold War, there was an attempt to figure out communism’s appeal and what to do about it. About jihadism, we still hear that it caters to the destitute and depraved, craven and criminal, or those who “hate freedom.” Politicians and pundits assure us that jihadism is nihilistic and immoral, with no real program or humanity. Yet charges of nihilism against an adversary usually reflect willful ignorance regarding the adversary’s moral framework. Talk to the Devil himself and understand that jihadism is not any of this, and we may more readily win the competition where it counts most, in coming generations.

     
Boabdil, the last Moorish king in Spain, surrenders the keys of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella on January 2, 1492 (by Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz).
     

CHAPTER 3
THE MOORS OF MEZUAK
     
We will continue our jihad until martyrdom in the land of Tariq ibn Ziyad [the Berber general who led Muslim forces in the conquest of Spain in 711]…. You know of the Spanish crusade against the Muslims, and that not much time has passed since the expulsion for Al Andalus and the tribunals of the Inquisition…. Blood for blood! Destruction for destruction!
—MARTYR’S VIDEO FOUND IN THE DEBRIS OF THE APARTMENT
WHERE THE MADRID TRAIN BOMBERS BLEW THEMSELVES UP
WHEN CORNERED BY POLICE, APRIL 3, 2004
     
I n the early eighth century, Muslim forces of the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus captured Roman Hispania from the Visigoths, founding an emirate over the whole of what is today Spain and Portugal. History named these Islamic conquerors of Spain Moors, after the North African kingdom of Maure, an ally of Rome’s archrival, Carthage, in the third century B.c. The Moors themselves never used the term. They were Arabs who led armies of North African Berber converts. Soldiers all, they brought no women with them and mostly married into already established Roman, Visigoth, Jewish, and native Iberian families. From this social mix sprang a culturally creative and technically advanced civilization that would last almost eight hundred years.
Almost immediately after the Muslim conquest, however, the Christian Reconquista of the Moorish states in the Iberian peninsula began, pursued across the centuries through innumerable battles and political intrigues. On January 2, 1492, the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile rode into Granada, the last bastion of rule in Muslim Spain, or Al Andalus, with Christopher Columbus at their side. The last ruler of the Kingdom of Granada, Boabdil the Unfortunate (el zogoybi), rode out from the magnificent red palace of the Alhambra with eight hundred of his knights to surrender the keys of the city to the Spanish sovereigns: “I saw the King of the Moors sally from the gates of said city,” wrote Columbus, “and kiss the royal hands of your Highnesses.” 1 Another Christian observed that:
There was no one who did not weep abundantly with pleasure giving thanks to Our Lord for what they saw, for they could not keep back the tears; and the Moorish King and the Moors who were with him for their part could not disguise the sadness and pain they felt for the joy of the Christians, and certainly with much reason on account of their loss, for Granada is the most distinguished and chief thing in the world. 2
     
Imbued with religious and nationalist fervor, Ferdinand and Isabella issued an edict in late March 1492 expelling all Muslims and Jews from the country; a few weeks later they agreed to sponsor Columbus in a quest to