What do they want us to do?

The answer, as that of the aliens in Independence Day is "Die."

Amir Taheri makes this clear in an Op-Ed piece in the Times of London:

[S]orry, old chaps, you are dealing with an enemy that does not want anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his divine duty to kill you.

The ideological soil in which al Qaeda, and the many groups using its brand name, grow was described by one of its original masterminds, the Pakistani Abul-Ala al-Maudoodi more than 40 years ago. It goes something like this: when God created mankind He made all their bodily needs and movements subject to inescapable biological rules but decided to leave their spiritual, social and political needs and movements largely subject to their will. Soon, however, it became clear that Man cannot run his affairs the way God wants. So God started sending prophets to warn man and try to goad him on to the right path. A total of 128,000 prophets were sent, including Moses and Jesus. They all failed. Finally, God sent Muhammad as the last of His prophets and the bearer of His ultimate message, Islam. With the advent of Islam all previous religions were “abrogated” (mansukh), and their followers regarded as “infidel” (kuffar). The aim of all good Muslims, therefore, is to convert humanity to Islam, which regulates Man’s spiritual, economic, political and social moves to the last detail.

But what if non-Muslims refuse to take the right path? Here answers diverge. Some believe that the answer is dialogue and argument until followers of the “abrogated faiths” recognise their error and agree to be saved by converting to Islam. This is the view of most of the imams preaching in the mosques in the West. But others, including Osama bin Laden, a disciple of al-Maudoodi, believe that the Western-dominated world is too mired in corruption to hear any argument, and must be shocked into conversion through spectacular ghazavat (raids) of the kind we saw in New York and Washington in 2001, in Madrid last year, and now in London.

As a way of telling God to butt out of human affairs this is quite ingenious, more clever and subtle than mere atheism. The problem with it is that God has never told any part of mankind any such thing, and any prophets he might have sent since Mohammed would have been killed by faithful Muslims. It's part of an old pattern for Western religions: God gives revelations through prophets; the people kill the prophets, but later recognize that they were prophets and adopt their teachings; but reject current prophets who try to tell them what the original message meant and murder them as they did the first prophets. Islam, Judaism and Christianity all pay lip service to peace, but they've all been coopted by clerics who came after the prophets and have edited and interpreted their teachings into something that is contrary to what they originally meant. Usually, the message was "Repent!" but somehow it got changed to "Conquer and control by force!" If God wanted that, he could have sent another flood, plague, faminer or what have you. What he really wants is for people to listen to him and quit struggling for power over each other.