IN seminaries and schools dedicated to obscure and sometimes hairsplitting debate, the usual Islamic schisms — Sunni, Shia, etc — may still loom large and matter a great deal. But in the arena where the world of Islam is under threat from invasion and occupation, these are increasingly irrelevant considerations.

When survival and existence are on the line, religious disputation (the bane of Islam throughout its history) is bound to take a back seat.

Hamas is Sunni, Hezbollah Shia but the two face a common enemy in the form of Israel and the United States. They are therefore fighting a complementary fight, each, consciously or unconsciously, helping out the other.

When Hezbollah challenged Israel, it helped ease pressure on Hamas. No wonder the Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah, is a hero for the Palestinian people (and increasingly a hero for Muslims throughout the world).

Surrounded by hostile Arab neighbours, Israel used to be David, or at least looked the part, when it was carved out of Palestinian land by the western powers. With the Arabs (barring Syria) making their peace with Israel on American terms, the roles have reversed. Israel is now Goliath and Hamas and Hezbollah the children of David (wielding his slingshot to deadly effect).

Israel is finding it easy to slaughter Lebanese civilians and bomb civilian targets. It is finding it less easy to defeat Hezbollah. No Arab army has fought Israel the way Hezbollah has, with such resolve and tenacity. In the past Israel has fought fast-moving wars, disrupting enemy lines, bypassing fortified positions, inducing shock and surrender. This time it is being compelled to fight a war of attrition in South Lebanon.

Hezbollah tactics are vintage Vietcong, its fighters, to quote one writer on the web, “...operating in a network of underground reinforced bunkers and command posts near the Lebanese-Israeli border almost unassailable by Israel Defence Force bombs.”

Two days ago the Israeli army proclaimed the capture of the small town of Bint Jbeil near the border. The next day it suffered heavy casualties there (up to 13 killed and over 20 wounded) and the fighting was still going on.

Syria is Sunni, Iran Shia but with both countries facing American (and Israeli) hostility, they find themselves on the same strategic axis. Is Israel likely to be drawn into conflict with Syria? We don’t know but there is a clear danger of this war spiralling out of control. If Syria is sucked into it, Iran will come under pressure to do ‘something’. That will make this conflict bigger than anyone could have imagined, unless of course Bush’s neo-con warriors, wanting to distract attention from Iraq, deliberately go about stoking the fires of a wider conflagration.

That would be counter-productive if not downright stupid, but then the Bush White House has been less than clear-headed in many of its policies after the Twin Towers came down.

Not long ago Iran (Shia) and the Taliban (fanatic Sunnis) were sworn enemies, uncompromising standard-bearers of two conflicting interpretations of Islam. Today, thanks to American hubris and bungling, they find themselves on the same side of history, Iran in a state of confrontation with the US, a resurgent Taliban battling US and other forces in the bleak terrain of Afghanistan.

Only in Iraq where Shias and Sunnis are killing each other does this analogy not hold. But even in Iraq the loathing that Shias and Sunnis nurse for the American occupation far surpasses their hatred of each other. And even there the Iraqi parliament, despite its puppet status, unanimously voted (Sunnis, Shias and Kurds voting together) to condemn Israel and call for a ceasefire.

If the carnage in Lebanon continues, Shias and Sunnis can still pull together. As fiery Muqtada al-Sadr warned recently in Kufa, “I will continue defending my Shia and Sunni brothers, and I tell them that if we unite, we will defeat Israel without the use of weapons.”

No one expects the wider Islamic world to send volunteers to Lebanon. The spine for it does not exist among Muslim governments. But why are even their lips sealed? Bangladesh has condemned Israeli “state terrorism”. But Pakistan under its valiant military rulers can’t bring itself to utter a single harsh word about Israeli atrocities. One of the few leaders Gen Musharraf has spoken to during this crisis has been King Abdullah of Jordan. Says it all, doesn’t it?

No conference of clerics has convened to bridge the divide between the two great opposing camps of Islam. No conscious attempt at unity has been made. But facing Israeli-American aggression, Shias and Sunnis across the arc of fire which now rages in the Middle East find themselves on the same side of the barricades, finding common cause against a common enemy.

American plans have run into the sand. “The war on terror” — that misbegotten offspring of calculated evil — was meant to root out Islamic radicalism and destroy the last pockets of resistance in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. The contours of Iraq were to be redrawn according to American wishes. That’s why Iraq was invaded and not because of any fiction about WMD. Syria and Iran were to be brought to heel.

None of this has happened with US forces bogged down in Iraq, Iran defiant, Hamas acquiring legitimacy as the elected voice of the Palestinian people, Syria not bending to America’s will, and now Hezbollah taking on the might of the Israeli army.

The question facing the world of Islam is a very simple one. Whose side are you on, the aggressor or the victim of aggression, the oppressor or the oppressed? There is no space for neutrality here or for silence because both amount to siding with the oppressor and playing into his hands.

As George Bush said in a different context, “You are either with us or against us.” He who is not with Hezbollah and Hamas is against the forces of Islamic liberation.

Pushed around and humiliated, the world of Islam is in a state of ferment. Its old elites have proved colossal failures, unable to provide democracy or stand up to the western powers. The Muslim masses are finding it hard to figure out whom they detest more: their own rulers or the American-Israeli axis responsible for so many of their woes.

The vacuum created by the bankruptcy of the old elites is being filled by the forces of Islamic radicalism. This new radicalism has nothing in common with the ‘fundamentalism’ of such organisations as the Egyptian Ikhwan. It is progressive in outlook and dedicated to social redemption and the fight against Israel and its patron, the US. It is not hostile to America, only to American policy.

Iran and Syria, as the US in its more blinkered moments chooses to think, are not behind this phenomenon. It is beyond the capacity of either to be responsible for such a far-reaching development. Islamic radicalism is a response to Islamic humiliation. Iran and Syria are not behind this humiliation. America and Israel are.

There is a lesson in all this for Pakistan as well. Its elites (including the military which has always been part of this elite club) have also failed the test of nation-building. Able to deliver neither democracy nor welfare, their most signal achievement has been submission to America and the creation of an exploitative order. If only they could realize the extent of their growing irrelevance.

How fareth the armies of the faith? Alas, not much better. Their leaders spout ignorance. Some of them have proved to be past masters at hypocrisy, talking of democracy but sleeping with the enemy. Some religious outfits, although mercifully not all, deal in the worst kind of sectarian violence, bringing a bad name to Islam.

But there are other role models to follow, none more inspiring than Hamas and Hezbollah. What distinguishes them above everything else is their spirit of defiance and resistance. If only through some miracle some of this spirit could rub off on the Pakistani nation and those who lay claim to being its leaders.