"This is just the start of a showdown between the West and The Rest"

(Amir Taheri, The Times, 2006/08/02)

"For almost a quarter of a century there has been intense competition within the Islamist camp over who could claim leadership. For much of that period Sunni Salafist movements, backed by oil money, were in the ascendancy. They began to decline after the 9/11 attacks that deprived them of much of the support they received from Arab governments and charities. In the past five years Tehran has tried to seize the opportunity to advance its own leadership claims. ...Many in the Middle East are alarmed by these shifts of power and dread the prospect of the region entering a new dark age under radical Islamist regimes. For this reason, there seems to be much less hostility towards Israel in the wider Arab world than we might expect in the West. There may be no sympathy for Israel as such but many Arabs realise that the current war is over something bigger than a Jewish state with a tiny territory of 10,000 square miles, less than 1 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s land mass.This war is one of many battles to be fought between those who wish to join the modern world, warts and all, and those who think they have an alternative. This is a war between the West and what one might describe as “The Rest”, this time represented by radical Islamism. All the talk of a ceasefire, all the diplomatic gesticulations may ultimately mean little in what is an existential conflict."