Tunisian philosopher Mezri Haddad has written a passionate and courageous denunciation of Islamist ideology in his blog:

"Arab Public Opinion... Has Found, in Antisemitism, the Perfect Catalyst For All Its Narcissistic Wounds and Social, Economic, and Political Frustrations" (Memri)

Haddad is furious with Islamists for creating

a new, mutant form of the most extreme kind of Islamism: Al—Qaeda and its macabre cortege of candidates for martyrdom... Bin Laden's triumph, his true miracle, consists in not only having given a civilized appearance to hideous theocracies, but also in having given a human, or even humanist, face to neo—fascist movements who aspire to power: Hamas in Palestine... Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and their alter egos everywhere in the Arab world...

"... Islamism — this theocratic, fundamentally totalitarian, and clearly antisemitic ideology — ... is doctrinally intolerable.

... the line of demarcation does not pass between 'moderate' Islamists and 'extremist' Islamists, but rather between theocrats and democrats, between fundamentalists and secularists, between those who have reduced the Koran to a case of nauseating antisemitism and those who, having seized the spirit and put the letter in perspective, know that Jews, like Christians, are Muslims' brothers in monotheism and in humanity, and that the Muslims' God is much more tolerant than the Islamists' divinity..."

Dr. Mezri Haddad is a man of great courage and integrity. When more people of good will speak out, the Islamist moment will pass into history.

James Lewis   11 20 06