We need someone like Friedrich Nietzsche to hit us hard so we are awakened to the dangers brewing ‎within the Islamic world. And just as his declaration of ‘God is dead’ opened the aperture ‎to the dark world out there, today, the irreconcilable nature of the modern world with the ‎identity of Muslims has opened up the gates of horror to us.‎

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in a country whose modern identity is built on ‎religion, is only a small example of the violence that appears to drown us, if permitted to ‎unleash. Some Muslims who have tasted this danger at close range know of its scope and ‎horrors. But unfortunately, there is no serious discourse among them and no practical ‎road map to deal with it. This fact alone makes the issue even more horrifying and adds ‎to the pessimism about confronting the ghoul facing the Islamic world. Perhaps it is true ‎that our predecessors mistakenly took steps that have brought us to our current ‎predicament. But perhaps they are not to blame as they knew of no other options to ‎whatever they did. Perhaps the thinkers of the Enlightenment were wrong to think that ‎growth and maturity for mankind came about through independent thoughts and ideas. ‎Perhaps it is the communications revolution that is responsible for this which by taking ‎away the notion of geography and space from our world, paralyzes us through the ‎bombardment of massive daily information that is targeted at us, forcing us to search in ‎futile for a meaning to all of this, and pushing some of us to violence as the solution. ‎

I am occasionally questioned for using the term ‘us’ whenever I use the term Muslim and ‎their violence. ‘It is they who perpetrate the violence and ‘we’ are not part of ‘them’’, ‎they protest. The reality is that when I read the writings of some of these secular thinkers ‎in the Islamic world I am astounded and perhaps even envious of how naïve they are in ‎the lines they draw between themselves and the Islamicists. They believe that by ‎changing their own views they acquire an identity that is independent from their native ‎culture and have a destiny that is different as well.‎

I think they have only eliminated the façade of the problem. Certainly this is one way to ‎simply shake off some of the baggage and tensions that they carry. I believe that anybody ‎born in a place that has the stamp of Islam on it is at least partly subject to the historic ‎and identity destiny of that culture, regardless of whether he accepts it or not.‎

Salman Rushdie may be among Muslims who denied having the same destiny and put ‎that in words that are said to be insulting to the prophet of the Muslims, but his destiny ‎has not turned out much different because ayatollah Khomeini’s death fatwa has been ‎following him ever since, depriving him of his desired and normal life.‎

So there is a group that I label ‘we’ or ‘us’ which is undergoing a historic crises ‎vacillating in choice between the modern and the traditional worlds, roots, and identity - ‎or somewhere in between. This crisis boils in some violent and bloody spheres, and ‎ironically has even appeared in the centers of Western civilization.‎

We are not in a position to present an independent study on the impact of the ‎international interference in the crises of the Islamic world. In fact, we are not even in a ‎position to openly and logically discuss it.‎

So, a problem that is rooted in our world and had to be resolved by us, is now imposed on ‎others who will resolve it to their own benefit - if of course they succeed in resolving it. ‎In other words, we have been driven to the periphery in our own country of origin, while ‎this periphery is dangerous and unsafe.‎