"Contemporary global politics is the age of Muslim wars." - Huntington

"The Islamic world differs from other world cultures today in one important respect. In recent years it alone has repeatedly produced significant radical Islamist movements that reject not just western politics, but the most basic principle of modernity itself, that of religious tolerance." - Fukuyama

A short history lesson is in order. The very Islamist movements that the West denounces today were once the greatest favourites of the United States. Why? Because all of them had two things in common: anti-nationalism (believing as they did in a single, overriding Ummah) and anti-communism.

Today western scholars are preaching the virtues of secularism in the Muslim world and saying that unless Muslim countries learn to separate politics from religion there will be no progress for them. The irony couldn't be thicker for it was not long ago that the West's principal enemies in the world of Islam were those very nationalist regimes--like Nasser's Egypt and the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria--which looked to secularism and the appropriation of national resources (from western hands) as the keys to national resurgence.

Two other disturbing qualities characterised these nationalist regimes: considering the Soviet Union as the great champion of anti-colonialism, they looked to it for support and also denounced the conservative Arab regimes like that of Saudi Arabia as pawns in Western hands.

With the cold war on, and a global competition for influence raging between East and West, the US viewed pro-Sovietism with loathing for obvious reasons. But it was no less suspicious of the second tendency because Saudi Arabia and the other Arab monarchies and sheikhdoms were America's staunchest allies in the region, underpinning America's growing hold on the Middle East.

In short, conservative Islam was pro-American while nationalist or secular Islam was anti-American. The US was comfortable with kings and sheikhs and uncomfortable with the upstart army officers who had triggered coups in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and, somewhat later, Libya and challenged American interests once they had come to power. Opposing these nationalist regimes were such Islamist organizations as the Ikhwan and Jamaa-I-Islamiya in Egypt which, for this very reason, found sympathy and covert backing from the US. Islamism now a bugbear for the US, was very much in tune with American sentiments at the time.

The heady days of Arab nationalism came to an abrupt end with the comprehensive Arab defeat in the 1967 war. Among other consequences, this defeat brought home to the Arabs their weakness in relation to Israel--and its distant godfather, the US--and led to a change in thinking which culminated in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and Sadat's eventual turning to the US.

The Arab nationalism of the old kind was confined to countries like Syria, Iraq and Libya while the rest of the Arab world, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia, fell under varying degrees of American influence and tutelage. The Iranian revolution of 1979 far from disturbing this alignment only strengthened it because Iran's neighbours were afraid of catching the revolutionary virus. Together with the US they looked at Iran through the same spectacles.

At this point came the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. To counter it, the US fashioned a coalition whose leading Muslim members were Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. From across the Muslim world shady fundamentalist organisations, most of them living a semi-secret existence, responded to the call for 'jihad'. In Pakistan the ultra-conservative military regime of General Ziaul Haq provided crucial backing for the American effort, just as another military regime in Pakistan, 20 years later, has provided crucial backing for another American enterprise in Afghanistan. The more things change...

What is the point of this retrospective? To show that in the eighties in the cauldron of Afghanistan Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were born. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, these battle-hardened warriors, strengthened in their belief that it was their faith rather than American help which had proved decisive in the fight against the Soviets, turned their attention to the other Great Satan, the US, the partisans of yesterday thus becoming the enemies of today.

None of this means the US should not have reacted to the September 11 attacks. But in doing so it should not forget recent history or try to find in Islam the causes that more legitimately and justly rest in its own policies. For instance, the Wahabism dominant in Saudi Arabia that American scholars now point suspiciously at has been an arm of American policy in the Middle East since the end of the Second World War. It is a bit tough that now it should be seen in altogether different colours.

Or consider even the present line-up in the Muslim world. The three Arab countries which approximate to the secular ideal are Syria, Iraq and Libya, all on America's hit-list of enemies. In none of these countries is 'radical Islam'--the kind which feeds on American fears--a domestic threat. By any yardstick, Malaysia is a liberal country in social terms and one of the few Muslim countries to have done well economically. But the US doesn't like Mahathir Muhammad. Iran is outside the US orbit of influence but not because of its adherence to the Shiite brand of Islam.

The common thread in all these cases is something else. Secular or religious, a republic or a half-way house to democracy, any country that has stood up to the US, and questioned its double-standards in the Middle East, has come on the list of its enemies.

If the US is so concerned about 'radical Islam' and 'illiberal' governments then it should be calling for democracy throughout the Muslim world. But that is none of its concerns. The kings and sheikhs of the region suit it fine because its primary interests in the Middle East, as it takes no clairvoyant to see, are oil and the Israeli connection. Everything else, including the wishes of the House of Saud, is subordinate to these twin considerations.

Nor should any illusions be on offer about the future direction of American policy. September 11 has led to no passion for introspection on America's part. If anything, it has triggered a militant mood accompanied with cries of retribution for the attacks. The devastating effect of American firepower, leading to the collapse of the Taliban, has merely reinforced the belief in American omnipotence, that nothing is beyond the reach of American power.

It's not that some of us overestimated the courage and fortitude of the Taliban. When the enemy was visible they fought bravely. Many of us got the new face of war wrong--a war as radical in its impact on the future as the invention of gunpowder, the rifle or the tank-- in the words of the London Observer, "... a war where men--or women--seated thousands of miles away can track the enemy's every move and then destroy them with a few strokes of a keyboard.

It is a war where a whole country can be put under intense surveillance without being occupied..." The meaning of guerrilla war has changed in this conflict. The Tora Bora mountains and caves were said to be unreachable and therefore impregnable. After the American air strikes on them, who will say the same again?

This is no setting for humility. After savouring the fruits of revenge in Afghanistan, the US wants to extend this same hi-tech war to other places. Iraq promises to be the next target. After that, who knows?

But this triumphalism is no endorsement of justice. As the West adopts a patronizing attitude to the Muslim world and preaches the virtues of secularism, let us remember that over the past 60 years the greatest threat to secularism in the Muslim world has come from the West. Of course we should not have accepted this state of affairs. But that's a different story.