Tarek Heggy's article should be mandatory reading for everyone who is attempting to make sense of the terrorists violence coming from the followers of radical Islam. How does a liberal democracy fight against an armed minority seeking to eliminate democracy and replace it with a theocracy. In the process it would implement a system of government whose political system would eliminate women from any meaningful role in society, establish a system of economics which does not work and impose a system of moral restraints that are at odds with most of the world's culturally accepted practices?

Well, giving women the vote strikes me as a fine start. Jinderella calls it a "free Islam's slave classes" strategy, of which women are just one component.

But the tyrannies of the Middle East will not go gently into that good night. Not Syria, Not Iran, not the Saudis; in fact, not the Islamists in general. Faced by those who will not submit, they will kill - until retaliation from whatever source breaks their power (and very probably them), or until they win.

That is the whole point and message of terrorism itself, after all. It is also, not coincidentally, the point and message of all the "honour" murders and related treatment of women in the Islamic world.

But we must also remember that the Islamists turn to violence as a result of their internal weakness, not their strength. We must not pity them for that - indeed, it must make us more determined to press, hard, on their weaknesses and give not an inch before their bluster. There is room on both sides of the political spectrum for this task.

Can we win this one? Absolutely.

Their internal contradictions and failures are far, far greater than ours. If we push and keep pushing, and don't let up, their hateful creed will crack and fall like the idol it is.

But first the press that thinks flushing a koran (but bibles are asswipe) is a crime that they should jump up and down about the evil republicans about .... well they will provoke reaction eventually, just not the reaction they suspect.

The left are doing everything they can to destroy a free press, lets hope all they destroy is their economic support, which will take care of them quite nicely.

As for the fanatics, they interpet our reserve as weakness, but they are only right about the left.

Omar: the dominant parties realize that Share'at law cannot be applied in Iraq because people don't want such a system.

I hope he's right. Unfortunately, some of the remarks near the election indicated that some politicians find Share'at to be something of an unobtainable ideal. That is, we can and should move towards Share'at, even though a pure form is impossible in Iraq's pluralistic society.

Better than the alternatives though.

Any chance these Iraqi bloggers articles could be posted in full somewhere besides blogspot? This would make them available to those of who are denied access to blogspot.

I'm sure I'm not the only one longing to hear first hand from Iraq.

JFarr, there are plenty of Iraqi bloggers and they've got plenty to say each with a distinct point-of-view. Unfortunately, most are on Blogspot and it would be a violation of blog etiquette (not to mention unethical) to seize somebody else's work even if the motives were good.

However, you can get a little flavor of what's being written by Iraqi bloggers by going over to Dean's World every Tuesday morning. Dean hosts a weekly feature there called the “Carnival of the Liberated”, a sampler of some of the best posts from Iraqi and Afghani bloggers. It's, ahem, editted by Your Obedient Servant.