It is pure fiction that pro-Muslim sentiment was either squandered due to Al-Qaeda´s Jihad on America or lost under the rule of “moderates” who failed to flush out extremist from their societies. It never existed. Envy for Islam, resentment of the power of its faith, hatred of our its potential to overcome evil has been a staple for centuries, but most particularly since victory in the cold war was made possible only through using the power of its faith — when books on the concept of Jihad against oppression were printed on Omaha, United States.

Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist President one can imagine, and yet we know that the US agencies began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency. Clinton made humility his vocation, apologizing variously for African slavery, for internment of Japanese Americans, for not saving Rwanda. He even decided that Britain should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. A lot of good that did us. Islam, however, remained the target. Taliban were demonized, sanctions against Iraq remained enforced, Middle East “peace process” remained a process to extend and consolidate occupation as ever. Madeline Albright said the price of taking lives of half a million children in Iraq is worth the prize that Bush now came to win. All this happened at the height of the Clinton Administration´s hyperapologetic, good-citizen internationalism.

Moreover, it is unseemly, even pathetic, for the so-called leaders of Islam to pine for apology on the day America lay itself bleeding and wounded with full complicity and foreknowledge of the attack. This is to carry into Muslim governments´ policy a pathology of their domestic politics — the glorification of victimhood and the lust for more privileges from the West for acting as bulwark against “Islamic extremism.”

It is not surprising that having set up at home a spoils system in the Muslim world that encourages every puppet dictator to claim even greater victimization than the next, “moderate” Muslims should lament the fantasy that Muslims did not seize and institutionalize our collective victimhood of Muslim “extremists.”

The anti-Islam personalities in the West apparently likes Islam when they are on their knees before a power such as the former Soviet Union and the Muslims, in turn, are on their knees for Western help to fight enemies of the West. From that the “moderates” deduce a policy — Muslims should remain on their knees, humble and supplicant, and enjoy the applause and "support" of the West for fighting against its perceived enemy after enemy.

This is not just degrading. It is a fool´s bargain — two Muslim countries occupied and thousands dead for a day´s worth of nice words and a few million dollars. The “moderates” would forfeit Muslims´ freedom of action and initiative in order to get back — what? Another statement from Bush and Blair that this is not a war on Islam? To be retracted as soon as Muslims stop playing victims of “Islamic extremism” and stop playing American mercenaries against their own Muslim brothers in the US promoted “war within Islam”?

Sympathy is fine. But if Muslims "squander" it when they resist invasions and occupations and prevent the next crop of dead in yet another Muslim land, then to hell with sympathy. Charles Krauthammer believes the world hates the US for its wealth, success, and power. Perhaps that is why it has taken lives of thousands of Americans at home and abroad to get the Muslim wealth in the Middle East.

In reality, Muslims have the power of their faith which despite surrender on every front have saved them from surrendering to the Zionist power like the Western establishments. Muslims, undoubtedly, are on the defensive at the moment. They, however, are fortunate to be victims of superior weaponry alone. Real sufferers are Western leaders and institutions which are victims of superior Zionist mind.

Muslims cannot win for losing. They are widely reviled as enemies of the West, yet in the 1980s they engaged in a combat to rescue the West from an enemy which it could never engage in an open warfare.

The search for logic in anti-Islamism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots are envy and terror in the heart of the oppressive pawns, engaged in violence for Zionists —who, despite claiming for modernity, have failed, and find their one satisfaction in despising resistance to the double standards of modernity and freedom.

While claiming, it is not a war on Islam, they give it a rest for a few moments. Big deal.

The Nation February 14, 2004

Abid Ullah Jan´s latest book, The End of Democracy, has just been released in Canada.