Many people in my region were quick to recall the infamous Colin Powell's film footage of Iraqi WMD at the United Nations Security Council. Indeed, the Bush administration lied about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then the world saw shocking images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and heard reports of illegal detention centers across continental Europe. Now the world watches the current conflict in Lebanon flare.

As Americans asked themselves "What Went Wrong" after 9/11, moderate and secular Muslims had long seen there was something fundamentally wrong with radical Islam. They have challenged the religious establishment to change. It is only a dwindling minority of secular Muslims and decent and hardworking Muslim immigrants in the West that feel defeated every time such incidents are exposed. All their efforts to promote the good image of Islam becomes futile in the face of the headline grabbing radical Islam.

A war between Muslims for the minds and hearts of the populace has started in earnest. But the war on Iraq, the ensuing Abu Ghraib catastrophe, and similar human rights abuses by America have undermined the efforts of reformist Muslims. They have been caught up in what one Muslim writer has described as the clash of the fundamentalist Bush and Bin Laden camps.

With Muslim extremists on the march from Somalia to Palestine and with the heaven-seeking vanguards bent on causing maximum loss of life in countries that gave them shelter and freedom, it seems the world is teetering towards an inevitable clash of civilizations.

A growing number of Muslims, however, believe a solution could come if the West practiced what it preached. They don't think the West can be a champion for freedom and human rights when they bomb, raid and kill Muslims every day in Afghanistan and Iraq. How can they promote democracy and reform in the region and reject the results of free and fair elections when Islamists come to power? How could they side with criminal warlords in Somalia against a popular Islamist uprising?

A Western policy of disengagement from the Muslim world might be the only plausible solution to eventually curb terrorism. Muslims should be left to settle their scores among themselves. If this ends up in evil forces gaining power, then so be it. At least the West will have another evil empire to deal with rather than frittering its resources and curbing the civil liberties of its citizens in fighting a faceless enemy.

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