Hardly a day goes by without news about a car bomb attack, machine guns or an explosive belt meant to cause as many casualties as possible, while the attacker is shouting “Allahu akbar!” So what is the nature of al-Qaeda or ISIS and their doctrine? What do they exactly want?

In my world, most of the Arab writers are hypocrites and dare not speak the truth that would threaten innocent people’s lives. The history of Islam is full of massacres, torture and murder, even among the first followers of Islam themselves and Muhammad, contrary to what Muslims claim.

In Islam, it’s known that Muhammad ordered the assassination of all the anti-Qur’an poets and those who stood against him.

Political Islam groups — including the Muslim Brotherhood — initiate political assassination, as Muhammad himself had done against his opponents. The earliest history of Islam is full of political assassinations. But after Muhammad’s emigration to Yathrib (“Medina”) and his success in persuading its tribes to accept Islam, he formed a military base and set out from there, conquering the Arab tribes and subjecting them to Islam with the sword (giving them the triple choice of Islam, jizyah, or war). And his followers were tempted by the women and the looted money (from the killing of the non-Muslims), and in this way Muhammad conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula.

Isis, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the Jihadists and the Somali Shabaab movement all read Muhammad’s biography well and know the role of invasions and armed forces in subjugating others to their beliefs. All their terrorist acts are based on Muhammad’s biography and the verses of Quran.

The attempts to beautify Islam by characterizing terrorist groups as hard-line Takfiri, and the claims that Islam is a moderate and tolerant religion that urges science and development are funny. The nature of Islam is radical. Consider what Muhammad says in the violent verses of Quran.

Any honest reader of the history of Muhammad sees a two-faced person, Muhammad in Mecca when he was a minority promoted peace by practicing Taqqiyah and on the other hand, Muhammad in Medina, once the Muslims were a majority, was a murderer who slaughtered, cut off heads, issued Quran verses of murder and persecution of non-Muslims, and took their money, their women, and their children until they submitted to Islam.

But why have the terror and killing escalated in Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and head-to-head operations have increased in Syria and previously in Algeria in the 1990s? Where have these people come from?

In the Modern world the first emergence of political Islam began in 1928 with the Muslim Brotherhood. Among the objectives of this group was the siege of the Arab mind by spreading radicalism and promoting terrorism, spreading myths, suppressing the freedom of opinion and expression, and assassinating writers and thinkers. The Muslim brotherhood promotes the slogan “Islam is the Solution.”

Islam was the solution to counter the democratic revolutions. Saudi Arabia and the oil countries participated in financing the phenomenon of political Islam, as Islamic ideology enabled Arab monarchs in the oil-rich countries to retain power and keep away democracy and accountability.

Thousands of mosques have been built to influence the ordinary people and to pray for the jihadi terrorism in Afghanistan. The Islamists had a victorious party in Afghanistan in the 1990s. They were pushing the Arab street for power, and in the early 1990s, Algeria was the first victim of Islamic terrorism.

The forces of political Islam emerged from that victory with large masses of people who believed in the slogan that Islam is the solution, and used their power in the street to enter elections and win power, as happened in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen.

But political Islam is not one the domain of one group. Its objectives are shared by the Muslim Brotherhood’s criminal brethren, dozens of Salafist jihadist terror groups.

The Muslim Brotherhood can use violence or Taqqiyah. If they are a minority, they use Taqqiyah; then after they gain dominance, they use violence, copying the actions of Muhammad in the Arabian Peninsula.

The West rejected the logic of the Islamists and America hit a drug factory in Sudan in the late 1990s because it was one of bin Laden’s investments. Bin Laden perpetrated terror attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. America responded with the bombing of Afghanistan; then bin Laden plotted the events of September 11, 2001.

The Republicans and conservatives in America declared war on terror, invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but failed to eliminate the terrorists.

After the failure of the Republicans in the war against Islamic terrorism, the Democrats in 2008 entered into an alliance with political Islam, and they supported the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and other countries. The strategy was to give power to the Muslim Brotherhood, while they also confronted the jihadist Salafis.

The attempt of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia to fight Islamic terrorism is a failure, as they always promote the false claim that terrorism has no religion and that Islam is not responsible for terrorism. The books of Islam which they printed and distributed by the millions in the past are still on the shelves of their libraries. The doctrine of Islam itself is the main source of terrorism, and to combat this terrorism there must be intensified efforts in the non-Muslim world to confront and counter this doctrine, which has become one of the most serious threats to security and peace locally, regionally and internationally.

Rami Dabbas is a Jordanian activist and academic.