Another rightward tilt?

THE forthcoming presidential election in India has aroused considerable interest among the various sections of Indian political opinion. With a multiplicity of parties likely to secure representation in the Lok Sabha through elections, the president’s power to call upon a political leader to form the cabinet at the centre assumes critical importance.

The outlook, as incumbent president K.R. Narayanan’s term of office is about to end, is that the present BJP-led coalition at the centre, does not have much chance of being returned to power.

Speculations are that Ms Sonia Gandhi, as head of the Congress party would make impressive gains mainly at the expense of her BJP rival to make a strong bid for prime ministership.

Her party may not be able to secure a majority of its own in the next Lok Sabha but she may succeed in forming a coalition of like-minded parties and establish her majority. Judging from the success of the Congress and its allies in the various state assembly elections in the recent past, she may be able to edge the present National Democratic Alliance out of power.

By proposing to elect a Muslim, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, as the next president, Prime Minister Vajpayee hopes to refurbish India’s image as a secular state battered by nearly four months of anti-Muslim rioting in the western state of Gujarat.

The outbreak of communal violence was most savage and ferocious in recent years, claiming a toll of some 2,000 lives mostly Muslim, and driving a hundred thousand Muslim families out of their homes in Ahmadabad and other towns in Gujarat.

Besides, Dr Abdul Kalam, his achievements as a nuclear scientist notwithstanding, cannot but be seen as a symbol of India’s growing militarism, aimed primarily against Pakistan.

It would be an insult to the exalted office of India’s head of state, which in the past has been occupied by such eminent scholars as Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and Dr Zakir Husain, that it is now to be held by someone who is virtually a non-entity in politics and whose only claim to fame is as the father of India’s missile technology, designed to carry weapons of mass destruction to its targets.

Dr Kalam is primarily a candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party which heads the multi-party coalition in power in New Delhi. The BJP is widely known as the political arm of the revanchist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and is politically closely allied with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), seen by many commentators as posing ‘a grave danger to Indian democracy and secularism. Initially, the Congress (I) was inclined to put up its own candidate for the presidency president, but later decided to back Dr Kalam.

The two communist parties of India, which have been consistently critical of India’s nuclear programme, have announced their decision to nominate as their candidate Lakshmi Sehgal, a veteran of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) which fought on the side of the Japanese against the British during the Second World War.

However, it is doubtful if she would stand much chance against the combined strength of the BJP and the Congress lined up behind Dr Kalam whose election is now a foregone conclusion.

The incumbent president, Mr Narayanan, a former diplomat, hoped to be nominated for a second term but this has happened only once in India in the last 50 odd years. The BJP was itself not in favour of an extension for President Narayanan. Its first choice was Mr P.C. Alexander, governor of Maharashtra, but this was turned down by the Congress (I) and its allies, making the election of Dr Kalam on July 15 certain.

Having a near-fascist government at the helm and a nuclear weapons specialist about to assume office as the country’s president, India is increasingly remote from the vision of its founding father, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, dedicated to peace and non-violence. It can no longer be seen as a pacifist nation with a message of peace and goodwill for the world community.

The Time megazine in a cover story as early as in April 1989, had noted that “the increased influence of the military in India’s dominating regional posture was becoming apparent.” It also observed that the Indian army commander, the late Gen Sundarji, not only encouraged the theory of “coercive diplomacy but also reportedly influenced, so markedly, by the sheer force of his personality, the political leadership in the country.”

A research study published in New Delhi last year also referred to the view held by Indian analysts that the present civil-military set-up needed “modifications” since “it is the military men who will be responsible to execute any orders to deploy and to use nuclear weapons.”

Some observers feel that “the Kargil conflict, though brief, had altered civil-military relations in India to the detriment of the Indian politician who appeared hopelessly out of depth at the initial stages of the conflict.” The prospect of a military mindset dominating those at the helm in India cannot but be worrying for Pakistan.

The mindset is already manifest in the inflexibility in India’s posture in relation to the on-going military standoff on the border. Dealing with New Delhi may become even more problematic for Pakistan once the expected change of president takes place. As it is, despite the hope of the easing of tensions in the subcontinent as expressed by the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who has just returned home after talks with the top leaders in New Delhi and Islamabad, there has been only a token relaxation on the Indian side.

Though the ban on Pakistan civil aircraft to overfly India has been lifted, the road, air and rail links between the two countries which India had unilaterally stopped nearly five months ago remain suspended. The Indian defence minister, George Fernandes, has made it clear that the Indian forces massed on Pakistan’s eastern border will not be withdrawn. While Dr Abdul Kalam is basically a scientist and little is known about his political inclinations, he is fully committed to upgrading India’s missile assets.

Although the parliamentary system is rooted firmly in India, it would be wrong to assume that the occupant of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi is a mere figurehead. He is the symbol of his country’s prestige and power. He also enjoys certain discretionary powers, even if limited, to regulate the working of the parliament and the government.

He maintains the balance between the central and state governments. On one occasion at least, when there were widespread allegations of high-ranking officials and some ruling party members receiving ‘kickbacks’ from the Swedish arms manufacturers Bofors, the then president was believed to have held consultations with various party leaders on the question of a dismissal of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

In a TV discussion on a BBC channel last week, three senior Indian journalists analyzed the powers of the president under the constitution. They all agreed that the president’s prerogative to invite anyone to form the government at the centre, provided he could later establish his majority in the Lok Sabha, armed the head of state with effective authority. He was also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. However, in reality the president can function effectively only if he enjoys the confidence of the prime minister.

A degree of concern is sometimes expressed with regard to the discretionary powers of the president, especially his power to select a prime minister to form the government at the centre. The well-known South Asian affairs expert, Paul Brass, believes that the concern has increased since 1969 as the political dominance has not been clearly assured and inter-party competition for power has become more intense. The election of the prime minister has, therefore, become “a highly politicized matter”, — an area where Dr Abdul Kalam as president will have a key role to play.

Seeking psychologists’ advice

SUCCESSIVE governments in Pakistan have all had a battery of advisers whose prime qualification was to know exactly what advice would find favour with the rulers and which advice to hold back. The present government is no exception.

Its team of advisers is undoubtedly the best in decades, and yet it fumbles and stumbles. Maybe what it needs is a good psychologist. In the United States, the El Dorado for psychologists and psycho-analysts, everyone who can afford it has a psychiatrist. They constantly go to him for advice of all kinds in moments of national stress, during business crises, for family problems, in matters of love and sex, when they are making a lot of money, and when they are not making money.

I am sure even President Bush has one. His problem is that while the poor man is going out of his way to appease and please the Palestinians, and preventing their complete annihilation, the Arab world is not happy with him. The job of his psychiatrist must be to console him by explaining to him the convoluted psyche of the Arabs. He has to be Jewish, as any other would only cause him further stress by speaking the truth. As in Pakistan so in the United States. Advisers are not supposed to be truthful.

Just as we instinctively take God's name when in trouble, Americans turn to their psychiatrist, who, for some reason, is known as a shrink, and pour out their innermost thoughts into his ear. He then tells them what is wrong with them. This they already know, of course, but they go to him just to spend their surplus income. Psychiatrists are to Americans what pirs are to most Pakistanis.

Those who have lived in the US tell me that the country is teeming with psychiatrists. It doesn't take much to set up as one. All you need is a small room and a big couch. A degree doesn't matter, only you should have a degree of the soothing manner and the confidence to insist that you are right in your analysis even when you're wrong. The idiot lying on the couch should trust you and his/her cheque book should be handy.

If I know that the USA has psychiatrists galore, the late Dr Rashid Chaudhry knew it better than me. He was one of Pakistan's better known psychiatrists. I remember how some years ago he advised Pakistani politicians to keep a psychologist in tow in order to tell them in advance what reaction their press statements were going to evoke among the public.

According to him political leaders armed with the psychologist's advice can trim their sails accordingly and not waste time and energy in making frivolous, untimely and gauche remarks in public, which most of them usually do. The trouble is that in Pakistan there just aren't enough psychologists to go around, while politicians grow like mushrooms. In fact language experts may have to revise the metaphor and we may soon be saying that, in this country, mushrooms grow like politicians.

And if fifty or more politicians of various hues and views are to go to one psychiatrist, imagine the confusion. With nearly 70 political parties registered with the Election Commission the poor chap will have to be excused if he mixes up his facts. He may advise a patient from the Jamaat-e-Islami to visit the mazar of ZAB and, by having a good cry, go through a catharsis. On the other hand, a rabid Bhutto fan may be asked to recite the words, "Ziaul Haq Mard-e-Haq" ten times after each meal. He won't last long that way.

An old friend has something to add to Dr Rashid Chaudhry's observation. He says the prescription that politicians should obtain constant guidance from psychologists is no doubt sound, because people in politics are usually carried away by their own oratory and tend to ignore words of wisdom uttered by others. But the reverse could also be true, and some politicians have been known sometimes to give good advice.

He explained it like this. In Karachi there is a sincere worker devoted to the cause of the physically and mentally handicapped. He is absolutely devoid of politics. When ZAB's government helped the cause dear to his heart, he was all praise for the man. Then General Zia came, and, much to this worker's happiness, put his entire authority behind the welfare of the handicapped and did more for them than anyone could imagine.

During Ms Benazir Bhutto's first term, this man praised the General at an official function for his contribution to the cause. The result was that he had to flee for his life from the place, with jiyalas in hot pursuit. Had this zealous worker kept a politician in attendance the impolitic mistake of praising Ziaul Haq in a PPP gathering could never have been committed.

Quite true. That is why I say that no one in the world, not even the greatest psychologist, can claim that he knows all that there is to know about human behaviour, and needs no advice himself. Rulers are especially averse to advice that is not to their liking, howsoever timely and sagacious it might be for them and the good of their government. Munnoo Bhai, the poet TV-writer and columnist, tells an interesting story in this behalf.

A number of newspaper columnists were invited by PM Benazir Bhutto, some time before the dismissal of her second regime, with the express purpose of stating their honest opinion on national and political matters. After she had spoken at length, and stressed the desirability of free and frank expression of views by her guests, one of them, the boldest in the gathering, asked to make sure they could really speak out their minds.

On receiving the royal assent, the man began to speak. After some fifteen minutes of his honest and forthright assessment of the situation as he saw it, she got up and left without a word. After waiting for half an hour for her to return, the columnists were told that the meeting was over, for the PM had suddenly remembered an important engagement.

Maybe some of the advisers of the present government have heard this story and prefer to remain silent rather than proffer advice which they know for certain will not be welcomed by the powers-that-be. That has been the fate of all true advice in history, and will continue to be so in future.

How Israel is helping India in war efforts

EACH passing day brings in more evidence of the growing Indo-Israeli relations. The recent launch of Israel’s next-generation of home-made spy satellite Ofek-5, and its plan to provide latest surveillance photographs to India will make it more belligerent towards Pakistan.

According to information available from different published sources, the 300-kilo Ofek-5, launched from the Palmachim Air force Base south of Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast, boasts all weather, day and night colour cameras. The satellite will orbit round the earth every 90 minutes and can take photographs of the designated area from a height of about 500 km.

Although most of the features of the satellite have not been revealed, some of its unique abilities include “de-tuning”, which enables the ground controllers to move the satellite to a specific location with great speed and accuracy, in response to special war contingencies.

The high-resolution cameras on the Ofek-5 (Ofek is a Hebrew word that means horizon) can produce images of objects small as one metre across, from an altitude of 600 km. The launch has given Israel an extended capacity not only to monitor military developments in the region but also demonstrates its advanced missile ability, experts say.

The satellite also reflects the expertise of the Israeli military industries like El-Op, Raphael and Elisra which provided the integration of all the new satellite systems, including the telescopic cameras, transmitter, sensors and auxiliary engines, in a very light and compact unit at a low cost of $12 million.

The spy satellite was launched into the orbit by the Shavit multi-stage launch vehicle, also known as Jericho. The ballistic rocket has a range of up to 7,000 km. Some years ago, the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories calculated that an earlier Shavit could transport a nuclear warhead a minimum of 5,300 km, if deployed as a ballistic missile. Israel has never commented on any of these estimates.

Israel launched its first spy satellite, Ofek-1, in 1988, followed by Ofek-2 in 1990. The third satellite in the series was sent into orbit in 1995. The first major high-tech in the spy satellite project came in 1998, when a rocket that was to launch Ofek-4 into space failed. The military tried to extend the life of Ofek-3 by turning off its batteries, extending its life from the planned three years to about six, but eventually it burned up in the atmosphere about a year ago. Since then, the Israeli military has been using a private Israeli satellite, Eros, for its needs.

The cooperation between Israel and India, according to reports, extends to intelligence sharing, counter-insurgency operations and border management. High-level visits have given final shape to bilateral agreements, and a joint ministerial committee for exchanging intelligence on “Islamic terrorism” has reportedly been established.

The story of Israeli cooperation with India does not stop here. Israel has provided a highly advanced Green Pine radar system for Israel’s Arrow anti-missile missile, three electronic tracking and command centres and the Rafael version of the Popeye cruise missile.

The Popeye II, said to be one of the Israeli defence establishment’s best products, is an electro-optical guided missile with a 150 km range. When it gets to about 20 km from the target, its electro-optical eye searches for and then locks on to the target. It has a 400-kg warhead and can be used against both reinforced targets or as a fragmentation bomb against anti-aircraft sites.

Apart from this Hi-tech equipment, Israel is also providing the necessary expertise in the form of Israeli electronic warfare and naval cruise missiles expert operators to India. The Green Pine radar system has been deployed in the Indian-occupied Kashmir between the towns of Uri and Punch. According to the published reports, the system covers all of Pakistani’s military command centres and bases between Islamabad and the Indian border.

The system, according to Jane’s Defence News is a transportable ground-based multimode solid-state phased array radar, capable of predicting impact points of incoming tactical ballistic missiles.

The reports say that the three early warning stations built by Israel are located north of Ladakh, near the Azad Kashmir town of Kupwara opposite four strategic Pakistan Kashmiri towns of Kel, Skardu, Astor and Gilgit and in the town of Kargil.

Indian defence experts say that since the outbreak of the Afghan war in October, the Indian supreme command had ordered its various services, especially the air force and missile units, to keep the Green Pine radar and the electronic early warning stations running round the clock to drill the crew in real battle conditions.

The Indian high command remained aware of every detail of the Afghan war and various movements taking place in western China and the eastern reaches of Central Asia.

India also used the Israeli Green Pine radar last May in its biggest nuclear exercise called “Perfect Victory”. The exercise was designed to depict an Indian victory over Pakistan. The 50,000 troops and 120 warplanes taking part in the war games practised deep forays into enemy territory and the takeover and demolition of enemy strategic installations.

Meanwhile according to Jane’s Security, a publication of the authoritative security and defence journal, Jane’s defence weekly, the Israeli intelligence agencies are reported to have intensified their links with India’s forces and are now said to be heavily involved in helping New Delhi’s fight against Kashmiri freedom fighters.

According to the Jane’s weekly, Israel has several teams in occupied Kashmir which are training Indian forces to fight the dozen guerilla groups operating there. The report says that while the exact extent of the involvement in occupied Kashmir by Israel’s intelligence agencies is far from clear, “it fits into Israel’s increasing focus on events in Central Asia, and as far as Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, to counteract Islamic fundamentalism, which it perceives as a major threat”.

Over the years Israel has continued to provide high-tech equipment to India to help it in the now Indianized “war against terror”.

A moral campaign to end occupation

THE end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the last century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure.

There is no greater testament to the basic dignity of ordinary people everywhere than the divestment movement of the 1980s. A similar movement has taken shape recently, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation. We should hope that average citizens again rise to the occasion, since the obstacles to a renewed movement are surpassed only by its moral urgency.

Divestment from apartheid South Africa was fought at the grassroots. Faith-based leaders informed their followers, union members pressured their stockholders, and consumers questioned their store-owners. Students played an especially important role by compelling universities to change their portfolios. Eventually, institutions pulled the financial plug, and the South African government thought twice about its policies.

Moral and financial pressure is again being mustered one person at a time. In the United States, students at over 40 campuses are demanding a review of university investments. Europe faces efforts ranging from consumer boycotts to arms embargoes.

These tactics are not the only parallels to the struggle against apartheid South Africa. Yesterday’s township dwellers can tell you about today’s life in the Occupied Territories. To travel only blocks in his own homeland, an elderly grandfather waits to beg for the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is required to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in the cities, but luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralyzing an entire people. The indignities, dependence and anger are all too familiar.

I am not the first South African to recognize the chilly reminder of what we just left. Ronnie Kasrils and Max Ozinsky, two Jewish heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle, recently published a letter titled “Not in My Name”. Signed by several hundred other prominent Jewish South Africans, the letter drew explicit analogy between apartheid and current Israeli policies. Mark Mathabane and Nelson Mandela have also pointed out the relevance of the South African experience to the current conflict.

To criticize the occupation is not to overlook Israel’s unique strengths, just as protesting against the Vietnam war did not imply ignoring the distinct freedoms and humanitarian accomplishments of the United States. In a region where repressive governments and unjust policies are the norm, Israel is certainly more democratic than most of its neighbours. This does not make dismantling the settlements any less of a priority.

Divestment from apartheid South Africa was certainly no less justified even though there was repression elsewhere on the African continent. Aggression is no more palatable at the hands of a democratic power. Territorial ambition is equally illegal whether it occurs in slow motion, as with the Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories, or in blitzkrieg fashion, as with the Iraqi tanks in Kuwait.

Almost instinctively, the Jewish people have always been on the side of the voiceless. In their history, there is painful memory of massive round-ups, house demolitions and collective punishment. In their scripture, there is acute empathy for the disenfranchised. The occupation represents a dangerous and selective amnesia of the persecution from which these traditions were born.

Not everyone has forgotten, including some within the military. The growing Israeli refusenik movement evokes the small anti-conscription drive which helped turn the tide in apartheid South Africa. Several hundred decorated Israeli officers have refused to perform military service in the Occupied Territories.

Those individuals not already in prison have taken their message on the road to US synagogues and campuses, rightly arguing that Israel needs security, but it will never have it as an occupying power. Over 35 new settlements have been constructed this year. Each one is a step away from the safety deserved by the Israelis, and two steps away from the justice owed to the Palestinians.

If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined. The current divestment effort is the first, though certainly not the only, necessary move in that direction.

[Archbishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his work against apartheid. He wrote this piece in collaboration with Ian Urbina, associate editor of the Middle East Report in Washington DC.]

Whatever became of the Muslim world?

IT wasn’t all that long ago that Islam-pasand was something of a pejorative term in Pakistan. Invariably an accusation rather than a self-description, it was usually applied to adherents of extreme right-wing organizations such as the Jamaat-i-Islami, which existed on the periphery of the political mainstream.

Not because the mainstream was opposed to Islam as such, but because religion was widely taken for granted and, by and large, accepted as a part of the personal domain. The parties that projected faith as their central tenet were sustained not just by their formidable organizational skills but by what was assumed, often correctly, to be a steady flow of the greenback, because the United States viewed religious organisations as a natural ally in its struggle against godless communism.

General Ziaul Haq was able to capitalize on a changed atmosphere by the time he carried out his US-approved coup in July 1977, partly because the movement against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that preceded it had sought to whip up religious fervour as a dubious means to an equally dubious end. To their enduring discredit, so desperate were Bhutto’s secular foes to secure his removal that they had few qualms about mobilizing under the fatuous Nizam-i-Mustafa slogan. And Bhutto erred grievously in seeking to combat the zealots on their own terms.

This made it simpler for Zia to get away with feigning piety, and to that end he instituted far-reaching changes that lent sustenance and strength to the clergy. The Jamaat’s influence within the army increased manifold, and in time it gained exclusive access to Afghan refugees. Within a few years of the advent of Zia, there were people in Pakistan who were willing to describes themselves as Islam-pasand.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 proved to be a boon for Zia as well as the US. Within months the Pakistani dictator was escorting Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to Torkham and pointing out that unless Washington stepped in, the Red Army would be rolling down the hills towards the nearest warm-water port. The performance wasn’t strictly necessary: as Brzezinski has admitted in recent years, the US was already deeply involved in Afghan affairs and had, in fact, spared no effort to lure the USSR into the country.

A wiser leadership in Moscow would have rejected the bait. However, what’s relevant in the present context is that the US allied itself with the most reactionary elements in Afghan society. One cannot help being amused by recent reports of an unsuccessful attempt by American troops to assassinate Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Hezb-i-Islami leader who was Zia and Ronald Reagan’s favourite mujahid twenty years ago.

Not only was the US unequivocally on the side of the jihadis at the time, it also didn’t give a second thought to echoing the self-serving jargon of the fundamentalists. Jihad equalled a fight for freedom. How times have changed. It is also worth remembering that in its determination to give the Soviets a bloody nose, the US was keen to encourage combatants from the Arab world to join the crusade against communism, and among the flotsam thus attracted was a certain Osama bin Laden.

Not surprisingly, Zia was only too willing to ingratiate himself with the Reagan administration, and was rewarded with the international acceptability that had initially eluded him. But not everyone in the region was willing to kowtow to the Americans. Washington was accustomed to obeisance from Tehran, but the Ayatollahs who replaced the Shah were disinclined to toe the line. The US thus found itself in the awkward situation of being sharply at odds with the mullahs in Iran while godfathering the mullahs in Afghanistan. If it was discomfited by such brazen hypocrisy, it never let it show.

It was taken aback, nonetheless, by the burgeoning support for militant Islam in parts of the Middle East — in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood had Anwar Sadaat in its sights and eventually pulled the trigger; in Syria, where Hafez Al Assad’s brutality went largely unchallenged; in Algeria and Jordan and Morocco. Even in Saudi Arabia. Iraq seemed safe and stable, though, under just the sort of strongman the US was comfortable dealing with, particularly after he declared war on Iran for no good reason.

Yet if adherence to archaic and unenlightened forms of Islam posed a serious problem, the Zionists in Israel were apparently unaware of it. Just as the US was more than willing to fund fundamentalists in the fight against communism, the Israeli authorities were only too pleased to sponsor the likes of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a means of stealing Fatah’s thunder. The main idea, of course, was not so much to posit an alternative to Yasser Arafat as to rob him of his credibility. All the same, one is compelled to wonder whether Ariel Sharon’s administration secretly recognizes that if Israel had responded reasonably to the stone-throwers of the first intifada by acceding to the unquestionably just demand for a Palestinian homeland, it would have robbed the suicide bombers of the second intifada of their reason for dying.

Simultaneously, a profound change was taking place in the composition of the world. There are those who claim that the fall of the Berlin Wall led none too indirectly to the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York. There may be an element of wishful thinking involved there, yet the fact remains that the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the most powerful nation in the world bereft of a sufficiently powerful enemy. The military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans against was desperate for a raison d’etre. Saddam Hussein had by then completed his transition from a valued ally to the personification of evil. But to pretend that the Pentagon could live by Saddam alone would have denigrated that monumental war machine. And the Iraqi leader helped by cloaking himself in the garb of piety.

To be cast in the role of the new Evil Empire, Islamism required expansion and exaggeration. Forces on the periphery of the Muslim world could hardly be presented as a civilizational threat. Nor could it be openly admitted that wherever fundamentalist Islam was not marginalized, its strength could be attributed, directly or otherwise, to American encouragement. Apart from that minor inconvenience, however, Islam was an enemy waiting to happen.

That is why the universally accepted nomenclature of old has been brought into conformity with the new world order. The Muslim world has ceased to exist. It has been replaced by the Islamic world. Muslim militants are yesterday’s villains. We now have certified Islamic terrorists. At this rate, before long there won’t by any Muslims anymore: we’ll all be Islamists. But just try referring to Jews as Judaists anywhere in the West, and you’ll be branded an anti-Semitist sooner than it takes to say “shalom”.

It would, however, be unfair to fault the West alone in this context. There can be little question that fundamentalism has expanded substantially among Muslims in recent decades. It is largely a symptom of desperation. Yet the majority of Muslims remain immune to the attraction of extremism. They do not see martyrdom as a panacea. They are not homicidal maniacs. They are prone to dismiss Osama bin Laden and his cohorts as dangerous lunatics, although they may see George W. Bush and his chief aides in a similar light.

Of course, Al Qaida has a lot to answer for, but in large part the anti-Muslim sentiments that have lately gained currency in the West are a case of latent prejudices rising to the surface like scum in a stagnant pool. A recent example is offered by the egotistical Italian ex-journalist Oriana Fallaci, who made a name for herself some three decades ago by being unpleasant to interviewees. In a text called ‘Anger and Pride’, she spews bile at Muslims — all Muslims — with a vehemence that suggests she’s been holding it back for years. Which may well be the case, given that since September 11 all manner of racists have felt themselves at liberty to vomit on Muslims.

In an invective liberally sprinkled with gratuitous four-letter words, Fallaci makes a series of bizarre claims, suggesting, among other things, that the World Trade Centre hits claimed forty to fifty thousand lives, and that the wretched North Africans who illegally enter Italy after hazardous sea voyages are probably being paid by Osama bin Laden to do so with the ultimate aim of destroying the Christian way of life. Implying that Muslims are barbarians, she barely stops short of making a case for their extermination. To her, Arafat is an incurable terrorist, while Ariel Sharon is a “tragic and Shakespearean figure”. Evidence that she is not just delusional but also ignorant comes when, after describing the mutual antipathy between her and the Muslim leaders she has interviewed in the past, she points to one of two exceptions: “poor Ali Bhutto, the first prime minister of Pakistan, who was hanged because he was too friendly to the West”.

“Had this book’s victims been anyone other than Muslims,” commented the Syrian-born, Paris-based writer Rana Kabbani, “it would not have been published, and certainly not by any self-respecting house. But Muslims are fair game now and to defame them en masse has become not only respectable, but highly profitable.”

She’s right, of course. The Islamophobes and violent Islamists are in the same boat morally and intellectually. It would be worthwhile for Muslims to devote their energies to reclaiming their cultural heritage from both these species. But there wouldn’t be much point in rebuilding the Muslim world unless we can make sure it’s an enlightened version of what went before.