Policy Review has a lengthy piece by Mark Gould on jihad that is illuminating in many ways. One small extract:
Goldziher characterized the doctrine well: “Muhammad left his immediate achievements within his Arabian sphere as a testament for the future of his community: to fight the unbelievers, to extend not so much the faith as the territory dominated by the faith, which was also the territory dominated by Allah. The warriors of Islam had as their immediate concern the subjugation, rather than the conversion, of the unbelievers” (26-27). The same point is made similarly by Rahman: “Whereas the Muslims did not spread their faith through the sword, it is, nevertheless, true that Islam insisted on the assumption of political power since it regarded itself as the repository of the Will of God which had to be worked on earth through a political order. From this point of view, Islam resembles the Communist structure which, even if it does not oblige people to accept its creed, nevertheless insists on the assumption of the political order. To deny this fact would be both to violate history and to deny justice to Islam itself.”
That is, of course, precisely the point I illustrate from the Qur’an, Hadith, Islamic history, and ancient and contemporary Islamic theologians in Onward Muslim Soldiers.