I just completed Bernard Lewis's The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. Read one short, quick book and you, too, will be better informed than 95 percent of the non-Muslim population. The book is under 200 pages, and Lewis' elegant writing will let you breeze through it in a matter of hours, despite the volume of information and analysis the book conveys.

There is enough in the traditional culture of Islam on the one hand and the modern experience of the Muslim peoples on the other to provide the basis for an advance toward freedom in the true sense of that word.

The war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked, and neither can succeed without the other. The struggle is no longer limited to one or two countries, as some Westerners still manage to believe. It has acquired... a global dimension, with profound consequences for all of us."

If freedom fails and terror triumphs, the peoples of Islam will be the first and greatest victims. They will not be alone, and many others will suffer with them.