Waking up to the Age of Terror

The Telegraph carries an editorial on what the Western World is facing in the Islamofascist terrorists.

In a commentary on the destruction of the synagogues, the British-based radical group al-Muhajiroun referred to the abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1924 and the supposed evils that had flowed from it. The goal of Osama bin Laden and his sympathisers is the re-establishment of the caliphate in the Middle East and the eradication of Western secular influence. This vision looks back to what is seen as a golden age of Islam in the centuries following the Prophet's death. And it seeks revenge for the perceived humiliation of Muslims in the Crusades, in Napoleon's defeat of the Mameluks in 1798, in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and in continuing Western influence in the oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Gulf.

It is a vision inspired by a deep-seated hatred of the fruit of the European Enlightenment – a belief in progress and the power of reason, and the separation of secular and religious power. In their reaction to this mode of thinking, the Islamists would take us back in time; in extreme cases, a flight to the supposed theocratic purity of the desert in the age of Mohammed. And their ultimate weapon is the suicide bomber - today armed with explosives, tomorrow, if the opportunity arises, with much more deadly nuclear, chemical or biological devices.

Once more, President Bush steps into the breach with a straight-to-the-heart-of-the-problem speech.

The President [George W. Bush] talked of great responsibilities falling once again, as during the Second World War and the Cold War, to the great democracies. Their task was to rescue failing states and curb weapons proliferation; in the last resort to restrain aggression and evil by force; and to commit themselves to the global expansion of democracy, a form of government in which the Middle East is notably deficient.

The President expounded at greater length on the last point in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington earlier this month. Dismissing the "cultural condescension" which assumes that Islamic traditions are incompatible with representative government, he referred to Muslims living in democratic societies in Turkey, Indonesia, Senegal, Albania, Niger, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, India, South Africa, the nations of Western Europe and the United States. "More than half of all Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments," he said. "They succeed in democratic societies, not in spite of their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability, and encourages the encounter of an individual with God, is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government."

In the Banqueting House, Mr Bush challenged those in the West who would appease the Islamists in the hope of avoiding further retribution, a step which would simply confirm to the likes of bin Laden that the secular democracies were ripe for the plucking.