    21

    the p

    ast, but in the future."  Dr. Abd El Sabour Shahin of Cairo goes a

    step further and warns that Western civilization makes a big mistake

    when it "thinks it will endlessly remain dominant."78  Even secular

    Moslem intellectuals teaching in the top universities of the United

    States and Europe have joined the expansionist bandwagon, calling for

    a leader who will pull world Islam together into an unstoppable

    force.79

    "Islam will... take over the world," said an Egyptian in Cairo in

    the late '80s to a crew from Britain's Granada TV.  No isolated,

    gray-haired zealot, he was one of a new breed of young university

    graduates, members of the middle class, and professionals, often

    among the highest achievers in their region.  These religious devotees

    do not have a happy fate in store for those of us in the west.  Explained

    the young Egyptian, "Islam is a tree that feeds on blood and grows on

    severed limbs."80

    In the early and mid-nineties, a spate of books and articles

    appeared proclaiming that, despite such rhetoric, Islam poses no

    geopolitical danger.  Abul Aziz Said, of the School of International

    Service at American University, said point blank that "Islamic

    fundamentalism is not the enemy of the west."  "Islamic

    fundamentalism," he declared, "is a defensive social and political

    movement, a reaction to westernization and modernization."  It is, he

    insisted, "an attempt to restore an old civilization, not create a new

    empire."    Yet,  later  in  his  article,  Said  said  that  ancient  imperial

    triumphs were at the heart of the "world influence" fundamentalists

    were legitimately attempting to "regain."  And the veil slipped a bit

    from his true feelings when, zeroing in on his conclusion, he declared

    that "imitative responses of Muslims to the challenge of the

    West...evince...identification with the 'enemy.'"81

    John L. Esposito, former president of the Middle East Studies

    Association, criticized "the creation of an imagined monolithic Islam"

    and contended that those apprehensive about fundamentalism "fail to

    account for the diversity of Muslim practice."82  Palestinian-born

    Columbia University scholar Edward Said echoed the assertion that

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