What mad pursuit?

The overall aim of the Islamists is the establishment of an all-encompassing
Caliphate to take over and control the whole world, as they believe existed
at the beginning of Islam.
But, one should remember two things, first that the Caliphate did not
exist in Mohammed's time, since by definition he preceded the Caliphate.
The Caliphate was devised by the religious/political leadership of Islam
(the ulema) to take over after Mohammed's demise. But, from the beginning
there were those who refused to accept the Caliphate, and preferred the claims
of members of Mohammed's family to succeed him, namely the followers of his
grandson Hussein, otherwise known as the Shia, or Shi'ites. This immediately
split the Islamic domain, and this split still exists between Iran and most of
the rest of the Sunni Muslim world today.
The other fact is that the Caliphate as an Empire from Iraq to Spain lasted
only 100 years. It spontaneously disintegrated, quite naturally, because the
interests of all those domains were not the same and it was physically
impossible to control and govern such a huge unitary state. The Caliphate
broke up into units, with Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad as the three most
powerful centers that competed with each other for supremacy within the
Muslim world, until the Ottoman Turks took control of the Muslim Empire.
Although in modern times it became easier for an Emperor to control a vast
domain with modern communications and an effective Army, nevertheless most
recently the trend has been to smaller national units. Three examples, the
British Empire, in which the colonies became independent countries, the
break-up of the Soviet Empire, giving rise to 15 countries, and Yugoslavia,
producing 5. As Empires, in which one group controlled many others, have
disintegrated, self-determination of smaller coherent ethnic groups has
resulted in the sovereignty of many smaller countries.
This is the opposite trend to the Islamist's dream. Not content with the
huge Muslim World, they want to overthrow all the Muslim countries, since
they regard the concept of separate national entities as un-Islamic. That
is why the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to overthrow Pres. Mubarak of Egypt, why
Hamas was trying to organize a massacre of the Jordanian Royal family, and
why Osama bin Laden is an enemy of the Saudis, who he wants to overthrow.
But, that is one aspect of their plan, the other is to take over the hated
Western world, and to eradicate the liberal democracies, which they regard
as intrinsically evil and decadent.
Of course, this is a long term plan, but frankly and obviously, it simply
cannot and will never work, not in this world, not even if they could
overthrow the Governments of all those countries. So they are killing people
pointlessly, but that hasn't stopped people before. The Fascists thought they
could control the world, until the world fought back. The Communists thought
they could foment revolutions in many countries, but they only managed to
control Russia and its periphery for close to 70 years. The Islamists would
not even be that successful. What a ridiculous mad pursuit.
The Arabs are so fractious, disorganized and violent that they could never
form a Caliphate anyway. For example, I just saw one of the "Doha Debates"
where they discuss a topic related to the Arab world and then the audience
votes on it. In this case they voted 2:1 to disband the Arab League, on the
grounds that it is useless and reflects only the political antagonisms of the
Arab countries. If they are that contentious how could they ever become
unified in a Caliphate. Forget it!