Så lenge Israel ble rammet av selvmord hadde de fleste muslimer sansen. Nå er det deres egne borgere som rives i filler. Da viser det seg at de ikke har sansen likevel.

Et gyldig poeng Thomas L. Friedman gjør. Selvmord som metode ble rettferdiggjort av imamer, skriftlærde, intellektuelle og politikere.

In part the Arab-Muslim world is reaping something it sowed. Way too many Arab intellectuals and religious and political leaders were ready to extol suicide bombing when it was directed against Israelis.

Noe helt annet er å følge det på kroppen selv. Da sier folk nei. Over alt hvor folk får sjansen sier folk nei til ekstremismen, hvilket gjør dem enda mer desperate.

Friedman har en interessant venn i Kairo, oversetter og venn av Naguib Mafhouz, Raymond Stock. Han sier mye vettugt om dagens situasjon.

«The Iraqi election was a total shock to the militant jihadist forces in the Arab-Muslim world,» Mr. Stock noted. «They warned Iraqis that ‘you vote – you die,’ and instead millions of Iraqis said back to them, ‘We vote – we decide.’ » And the thing they are deciding on is not to be pro-American, not to be pro-Western, but to try to build their own Arab society in a way that will be open to modernism and interpretations of Islam that encourage innovation, adaptation and progress.

The jihadist forces hate this notion. They see the struggle for democracy in Iraq as anathema to everything they stand for: a literalist interpretation of Islam, unsullied by modernity, adaptation, women’s rights or political and religious pluralism.

Personlig tror jeg jihadistene har tapt kampen i Irak. Ikke mot amerikanerne, men mot folket. Folket har vendt seg mot dem. Derfor blir aksjonene stadig mer brutalt rettet mot sivile. Det er helt bevisst. Dermed fremmedgjør de seg selv også i forhold til nasjonalistiske sunnier.

Et brev funnet under et raid i Bagdad, bekrefter jihadistenes isolasjon:

Tuesday also brought what appeared to be good news in the Iraqi government’s battle against insurgents. A letter believed to have been written to the most-wanted terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, by one of his followers and captured during a raid on Thursday cites «low morale» among Mr. Zarqawi’s followers, the incompetence of insurgent leaders and «weakening support for the jihad,» military officials said.

The letter, seized during a raid in Baghdad that left five terrorists dead, also accuses «the sheik,» as Mr. Zarqawi is said to be known to his followers, of abandoning them after the Marines invaded Falluja in November. Written by Abu Asim al-Qusaymi al-Yemeni, the letter was dated April 27, the day before it was found, the military said. Another document found during the raid listed «targeting information and sketch maps for kidnappings and bombings,» the military said.(nytimes)

Det er to parallelle løp: demokrati og terror. Der demokrati får utløp, slås terroren tilbake, og det gjør dem helt desperate. Nå er demokratiske tendenser merkbare i flere arabiske land. Hosni Mubarak leker med ilden hvis han velger å slå ned med politistatsmetoder reformatorene like mye som terroristene.

Bildet er selvsagt mer komplisert: det er også shiaenes konflikt med sunniene, som har potensial til å bli voldelig. Stock diffrensierer:

These are, he said, the war within Islam between Traditionalists and Rationalists, which dates back to Baghdad in the ninth century; the struggle between ardent Sunnis and Shiites, which dates back to succession battles in early Islam; and the confrontation between Islam and the West, which dates back to the Arab conquests of the seventh century and the Crusades.