The newest Economist's front cover is a bit frightening.



Jose Maria Aznar down...we'll see about the others. I'm not particularly confident in either Bush or Blair's hold on power (I know little of John Howard of Australia); the most disturbing thing about all this is how so few Westerners realize that to Islam, there's just the land of the infidel...it doesn't matter if you didn't support the war in Iraq or not.





Are there no heroic souls with lofty ambitions; are there no helpers and defenders of righteousness?

0, who will redress the humiliation of a people who were once powerful,

a people whose condition injustice and tyrants have changed?

Yesterday they were kings in their own homes, but today they are slaves in the land of the infidel!

Thus, were you to see them perplexed, with no one to guide them, wearing the cloth of shame in its different shades,

And were you to behold their weeping when they are sold,

the matter would strike fear into your heart, and sorrow would seize you.

Alas, many a mother and child have been parted as souls and bodies are separated!

And many a maiden fair as the sun when it rises, as though she were rubies and pearls,

Is led off to abomination by a barbarian against her will, while her eye is in tears and her heart is stunned.

The heart melts with sorrow at such, if there is any Islam or belief in that heart!

-from Lament for the Fall of Seville, Abu al-Baqa' al-Rundi (d.1285).



Soon enough, if they do not change, the Spanish & the E.U. will be singing that song. Imagine a world where tropical Africa, the Americas, and potentially East Asia, face off against Europe, northern Africa, Western Asia, and the Indian Ocean archipelagoes.



I wonder, who'll have the more post-millenial vision (he asked, bitterly).



Thanks be to God that he is faithful.