There are many curious aspects to Islamic ideology. The most profound is the quest for universalist power or control. From its earliest days as an imperialist ideology Islam has always sought to conquer and control other peoples and cultures. This dogma of universal power emanates from Mohammed through the early Caliphs, to the Ottoman empire, to the theology of Khomenei, al-Banna [who started the Muslim Brotherhood], Bin Laden, Turabi [Sudan's dictator] and hundreds of Imams in Western Europe and North America. Such fascistic overtures to world domination are based on Islamic doctrine and have 1400 years of precedents. They did not arise lately, or by accident.

While not a monolithic movement, this core part of Islam's ideology – its will to power and rule -- is its prime motivating factor. From 7th century moon cult loving Bedouin tribes soiled in savagery and uncivilised life, Islam has spread to all parts of the world and thanks to immigration, conversion and historical rewriting continues to compete with Catholicism as the fastest growing global faith. Islam of course has nothing in common with Christianity.

One is the universalist dogma of early Islam – 'to conquer the world and make men submit to Allah', the pagan Arabian moon cult – to paraphrase the last words of Mohammed. This was the intent of various Muslim groups from the Arabs of the 7th century; to the Turks in the early era of Ottoman conquest; even to the converted Muslim hordes of the Mongol irruption. Muslims have a long history of believing that they will rule the world.

A second curious aspect of Islam is its endless bloody intra-familial civil war, in which various factions fight over national and regional empires and power – using religion as a disguise. These factions quote various fundamentalist ideas, grievances, 'national disgraces' or embitterment's while invoking the glory days of the 'Caliphate' to justify their lunge for power. As with any imperial project Islam's internal divisions are over who should control resources, power and society in any given political-social space. These rivalries have nothing to do with quaint Western ideas of freedom, individuality, due process or rights.

This internal civil war is a battle over Islam's soul and vision and how 'dogmatic' Islam should be.

In Islam's universalist tradition Muslim states can never be tainted with alliances, contact, or dependency upon 'crusader' states. For much of the first century and a-half of Frankish domination of the Levant, this policy was ignored. Muslims were as inclined to make alliances with the Christians as they were with each other. Yet in modern Islamic theology running through Al Banna, Qutb, Maududi, Khomenei, Bin Laden and various fundamentalist-Wahhabi styled Muslim extremists, we can see a more 'pure' demand and a purer implementation of the original Islam, the one carried by the victorious armies of Mohammed and his successors in the first 40 years of Islamic imperialism.

The fact that Mohammed and his successors engaged in rape, slave trading, torture, racism, drinking, unlimited sex and endless acts of an unholy nature escape these fundamentalists. For the modern Islamist or Muslim extremist the scope, scale and rapidity of Arab imperialism is proof enough of 'Allahs' blessing and of early Islam's divine grace. If Muslims become pure again, than the power of Allah will inspire and propel them to the establishment of a new Caliphate.

The last Caliphate died with the Ottomans dismantled in 1923 as the Turks gave up their empire and installed in its place a Turkish nationalist state. The mild Westernisation of Turkey has always inflamed fundamentalist Muslims who view the weak, tottering and fascistic Ottoman empire, in which millions died and millions more were enslaved, as an apogee of Muslim imperialism. The Ottoman empire was only kept alive by the geo-political aspirations of European powers, who could and should have taken back Istanbul which they could have done at any moment they desired.

From Turkey to Iraq to the Atlantic sea, the Ottomans at one time constituted the largest Muslim empire in history outside that of the converted Mongols. And like the Mongol empire it was a pre-modern, poor, agrarian and backwards society – premised however on Sharia law. Sadly for Muslim fundamentalists the Ottoman empire was of course nothing more than crass Turkish imperialism which used Islam as a convenient tool. The Turks were enthusiastic Muslims – but still Turkish. The Ottomans simply used Islam as an ideological means to conquer, subdue and pacify. Every empire needs an ideology.

In fact the Turks had great disdain for many of the Arab peoples within their empire, viewing the Arabs as untrustworthy, lazy and stupid. They also had little time for other non-Turks within their empire as the massacres of Jews, Christians, Armenians and Berbers so amply demonstrate. As with the early Arabs, the leadership of this 'Muslim' empire was the ethnicity who enjoyed power, the rest of the empire simply obeyed.

This is the curious feature then of Islam. Muslims have always traded, allied or been dependent in some way on the infidel nations. All Muslim empires have had trade, military and political dalliances with non-Muslim Western states. Even today many Arab and Muslim states are close dependencies of the US. Egypt, the house of Saud, Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco and now a free and liberated Iraq are important parts of the US global system. The US does not control these states of course, but it does have leverage. Islam has never been pure as its fundamentalists claim.

This then might be Islam's salvation. Muslim fundamentalists rage on about Islam's golden age which never existed; or its early epoch of purity and power funded by Allah – a simplicisme which also never existed. They scream that any contact with the infidel powers must bring destruction and that regimes such as Iraq's parliamentary democracy or Mubarak's authoritarian Egyptian state, must be destroyed since they depend on the crusaders. Any sentient person, who can walk upright knows these claims to be preposterous but they carry great weight in the Muslim world. They have after all, 1400 years of history behind them.

Islamic jihad and will to power transcends Sunni, Shiite, national, regional, ethnic, linguistic and tribal rivalry. Muslims have always fought each other over the sources of power and wealth. They fight today in Iraq and elsewhere in an epic battle between those who want a new Caliphate ruling the Muslim world [Bin Laden, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran] which is able to destroy the West; and those Muslim nationalists who want a modern nation state and who are not interested in a transnational empire knowing that such empires have little to do with Islam and more to do with the domination of one Muslim tribe over another [see the Ottoman empire as an example].

We in the West should be thankful that Islam is again, perennially plunged into a civil war. But we would be naive to dismiss its universal appeal. If the forces of jihad can win in North Africa, Lebanon [which was a Christian state until the Muslims destroyed it]; Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, a loose confederation of Islamic extremism is certain. Historically Islam is probably the greatest imperial project in history. and this primitive appeal to destroying the 'infidel' explains in part the puzzling popular support for fascist organisations such as Hamas and Hizbollah.

Islam's ideological masterpiece of control – the Koran – excites entire populations to jihad, domination and the eradication of the kaffir. Islam's desire for universalism is a potent force and one that will not die until the ideology is modernised and updated. And that is something only Muslims can do. It is doubtful however that most Muslims have any intention or desire to change the underlying ideology of universal will to power embedded in the Koran, the Sharia or the Hadiths.

This is what makes Islam so dangerous and what makes conflict so inevitable. Islam is simply and utterly incompatible with modernity. Until Muslims decide to modernise their 12th century codified text and force their ideology to conform to the modern world, conflict between two opposing cultures - one modern, one pre modern - is of course inevitable and necessary. Failed ideologies which reject outside influences and change are only defeated by military might. This is in fact the main lesson of the 20th century and the past 11 years of this century.