The decidedly non-Twentieth Centry roots of Jihad

It seems to have almost become a cliche that the roots of Jihad go back only to the founding of the State of Israel, or at worst, the 1917 British capture of the Middle East from the decaying Ottoman Empire. Melvin Lee has a fascinating article in the Middle East Quarterly on how Jihad has targeted the West in general and the United States in particular since the early Nineteenth Century: http://www.meforum.org/article/1830, when the Barbary Pirates were waging economic and religious Jihad against American trading vessels, leading President Thomas Jefferson to send the American Navy after them.

Thus, the "commonly-accepted wisdom" is anything but. Personally, I see the war that Islam has waged against the West started long before that, but at least there is some recognition being given to the fact that this is a centuries-old conflict, and not just a modern phenomenon.