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This is awfully misleading especially based on your view that Islamists wish to "take over the world". The reality is no one has a good estimates and almost everyone bases their number on Pipes' estimates. But suppose we use that as a basis anyway. I have several questions.

If there are that many why haven't they simply inundated and taken over Yeman, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and SA? Certainly they could take over one country? The reality is there is not one single country in the world which has followed Islamism.

Can we explain why the 100 million Islamists have not taken over a single country? Well using even Pipes' estimates he figures that of the 10% only 5% are active supporters of terrorism. That is not to say they are terrorists but supporters. So we are down to about 5 million supporters who are spread all over the Muslim world. This means that 95 million Islamists are using other venues to seek their goals such as using democratic processes. Wow I know you are not suggesting democracy is not a valid political process, even for Islamists.

But what of the 5 million? Just a few years ago DoS estimated there were about 20k-30k active Islamic terrorists operating from the Philippines to Morocco. So now I have to ask again who are we fighting?

So I have to repeat ... your statement is misleading.

You obviously have forgotten about Afghanistan under the Taliban.

I'm sorry, but what about... Iran?

Actually any country that has as its constitution the Qur'an has and is following Islamism. That means that most of the Arab countries in the Middle East are following Islamism.

I had not read this thread until after it had been heavily altered, but are you perhaps distinguishing between "Islam" and "Islamism"? Or am I paying over-much attention to the words you are using?
Yours,
Issodhos

What? I thought you defined "Islamism" as the extreme faction, not mainstream Muslims. So are you saing that all Arab nations are terrorist based?

I believe my statement was suggesting the current world situation. You are obviously correct in that fundamentalists i.e. in this case the Taliban, were in fact successful in gaining control of Afghanistan after a long protracted period of civil unrest.

But what bothers me is your failure to address my accusation that you have proffered misleading information regarding Muslim fundamentalists i.e. Islamists. Would you care to respond and place in proper context?

I suppose one could view the world in bold strokes and thus lose proper granularity to make any distinctions, but that would lead to some simplistic view of the world i.e. them against us.
The Iranian fundamentalists are far from the more stringent fundamentalism promoted by say the Salafists, or Egyptian Islamic Jihad, or Muslim Brotherhood etc who would institute a much more strict version of Islam which would be tantamount to a totalitarian form of government. What I believe is found in Iran is closer to the wishes of many Muslim and that is implementation of Sharia.

But even further we can analyze Iranian actions. If Iran were intent on implementing Islamism then why haven't they invaded neighboring countries? I mean terrorists are working hard in all Muslim countries so where are the Iranian jihadists? Ahh .... but you say what about Hamas and Hizbullah. The basic tenet of both (or one depending on how you view them)is anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is apparently an afterthought among some Islamists.

Iran is democratic even though sometimes the issues and candidates are tightly controlled, but it could be favorably compared to other Muslim secularists democratic governments in the region, who practice the same types of restrictions.

The problem with blurry distinctions is eventually we end up grouping/profiling people based on some generic criterion. Thus we would see remarks like say all fundamentalist Muslims are enemies of the state. I suspect this is nothing more than a politically correct back door for racism.

So if you want to put Iran in the same basket as AQ (as a representative with high profile of Islamists) then you have to provide a lot of explaining to make that connection especially when the Iranian "hardliners" have rejected AQ and it's philosophy. But be my guest, as I want to see how you would argue that.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say I don't believe there are any countries which have as a constitution the Qur'an. Do you really mean that there are countries which include Sharia as part of their constitution?

No.

The problem with semantics is both words have been used interchangeably until recently when the more modern connotation of Islamism has been attached to the revivalist fundamentalist movement growing out of Muslim Brotherhood. This is not to say Muslim fundamentalism is new as all have as their provenance descendancy from the Wahabi movement in the late 18th century, but rather the re-emergence as a reaction to Western encroachment on Islamic ideals.