A leading Israeli Arab Muslim cleric said at the weekend that the Jewish state will very soon cease to exist and the whole of the country will come under Sharia (strict Islamic) law as another piece in the puzzle to reconstituting the Islamic Caliphate.

Since 9/11, the Bush administration has used many analogies to describe the grave threat that Al Qaeda and terrorists represent. President Bush has likened the war against terror to World War II. The Cold War is also invoked, and the label "long war" connotes not only a struggle of great length but one where our very way of life is challenged.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, was no friend of Islam. Late at night, and in his cups, Turkey's iconic leader would often refer to the nation's Islamic past as "a necklace of corpses" that defiled the new state he was trying to create from the ruins of the Ottoman empire.

Writing in 1916, C. Snouck Hurgronje, the great Dutch Orientalist, underscored how the jihad doctrine of world conquest, and the re-creation of a supranational Islamic Caliphate remained a potent force among the Muslim masses:

Someday, when the war in Iraq has become a historical episode, we will tally up the lessons learned-if, that is, we ever learn any. Here are two worth mastering because failing to do so probably means we will no longer exist.

By Dan Murphy | Staff writer

Muslims in four countries say they support both Islamic influence and democracy. They also say undermining Islam was a goal of US foreign policy.

CAIRO - One of the most alarming findings of a new poll of attitudes in four Muslim countries is that a majority of respondents say they support two of Al Qaeda's chief goals: They want strict Islamic law, or sharia, in Muslim countries and to "unify all Islamic countries into a single state, or Caliphate."

One of the myths consolidated by Islamophobes is that an independent Islamic entity will follow 'the salafist extreme faction that would impose the strictest interpretation of Islamic law similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan.' They present the image of a 12 year old boy cutting the head off of a bound man while he chants God is Great.