Battle already lost

Submitted by Observer (Australia), Jul 31, 2002 at 03:19

Your major theme is the need to enlist the support of moderate Islam against radical Islam and the Islamic terrorists. However, you, Margaret Thatcher and everyone else following events since September 11 has noticed that there have been extremely few voices of moderate Islam raised against Osama and Co, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.

I can only see two possible explanations. Either moderate Islam is in fact rare and the so-called "moderates", while not active terrorists are covert symphatisers. Alternatively, the moderates are cowed by the radicals for very good reasons: think of Anwar Sadat.

These are not mutually exclusive hypotheses and both lead to the grim conclusion that enlisting moderate Islam to fight Islamic radicals is a battle already lost. This does not mean that the West will lose: we have monstrous technological advantages and I predict that we will use them if seriously threatened.

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