Of the 60 conflicts raging, or slow-burning around the world, the majority involve the Muslim world.

Afghanistan, Acheh, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Sudan are just some of the more prominent examples. If the separatist problem in the southern Philippines and Thailand are included, the list will get longer.

With the advent of revivalist Islam, a development that has been simmering since the defeat of Arabs at Israel's hands in the Six Day War in 1967.

Islam, either of the reformist or radical strain, will remain indispensable in building a country or, as shown in the Sept 11 attacks in 2001, to destroy one as large as the United States.

But while not all conflicts originated or even revolved around Islam - the Palestinian problem is a land-grab issue pure and simple - the Islamic dimension is impossible to ignore for three reasons.

First, combatants rely on Islam to recruit and retain their followers; more importantly, to mobilise them as jihadi. Second, Islam provides the cover of legitimacy essential for the pursuit of secular goals. Third, by 'Islamising' a conflict, the warring parties gain the sympathy of the larger Islamic world, a ruse useful to receive various forms of governmental and non-governmental support.

To Jessica Stern of Harvard University, these enduring-conflicts have invariably allowed some radical Muslims to make their career fighting 'in the name of Islam'.

Such efforts, bankrolled by their Islamic paymasters, transform the politics of their vocation into an existential 'addiction' instead.

And this lifestyle cannot be easily abandoned, as alternate employment is either unavailable, or the family of the Islamic operatives have become 'hooked' to the economic lifeline thrown by their sponsors.

Wars make (professional) warriors. Therefore, more wars, by the dint of this argument, make more warriors.

Aware of the connection between the Hobbesian state of the Muslim world and the growth trajectory of political Islam, with the former spawning more diehard terrorists for the latter, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has estimated that the current 'war on terror', might well take "50 years", if not longer to prosecute.

Tactical allies

It will take years before the Muslim governments themselves can un-do their previous collusion with the Islamic elements.

In Egypt, for example, the regimes of Nasir and Sadat worked actively to demobilise the working class. Sadat found tactical allies among the Muslim Brotherhood and among the newly growing radical Islamic movements in universities.

Sadat released imprisoned members of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1972-73, and encouraged them to attack leftists, whom he regarded as his major political adversary, according to John Waterbury, the Middle East studies specialist at Princeton University; a point concurred by Yahya Sasowski of the Brookings Institution.

When Hosni Mubarak came to power, this pattern of collusion continued, albeit with the more reformist wing of the Muslim Brotherhood to sideline the radicals. Elsewhere, this Faustian exchange continued.

To counterbalance the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) comprising 14 groups of Muslim and Christian credentials, Israel allowed the growth, and consolidation of Hamas to check the influence of Chairman Yasser Arafat (photo), a development that it has since grown to regret given the wave of suicide attacks from the ranks of Hamas.

In Yemen, the unification between North and South was followed by the Northern ruling party's consistent assault on its Southern Socialist partners.

According to Lisa Wedeen, a political scientist at University of Chicago: "In 1992-93 alone, there were approximately 150-160 assassination attempts against members of the Yemeni Socialist Party - most of them carried out by self-identified radical Islamicists who were encouraged financially and politically by the regime."

All nine of the Saudi citizens who participated in the Sept 11 attacks, for instance, had Yemeni roots.

However, regardless of the time frame and contexts that have given rise to political Islam, diplomats and peace makers involved in ending, or localising, the various conflicts in the Muslim world, even if they do not speak the local languages, are able to understand this Islamic dynamic instantly: on the ground, the ethnic, tribal, and nationalistic feelings of the combatants are simply too obvious to mask anything else.

The proverbial 'Arab street' can, on occasion, make the distinction too, as when they called the bluff of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, who tried but failed to use Islam to defeat the allied forces led by the US.

Two 'readings'

Just how often the Muslims in war-torn countries, split by the internecine conflicts, where emotions are already running high, can tell when/whether Islam is being manipulated is of course the issue. Seeing through the machinations of Saddam, for one, was easy to say the least, as he had for years pitched the Iraqi army against Muslims.

It is more difficult for Arabs to distinguish the likes of Osama bin Laden, for instance, as this is after all a man who has abandoned all the riches in the world to take to the mountains of Afghanistan as a jihadi.

Indeed, there is evidence and arguments that Muslims the world over are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish a 'true' Islam from a 'false' one. Statistical research from American and Arab political scientists, for instance, are producing two sets of 'readings'.

In post-Sept 11 research conducted by Prof Mark Tessler of University of Michigan, it is beginning to emerge that while Arabs, even religious ones, such as those in Egypt, consistently hate American foreign policy, they admire US education and freedom. (See chart)

Such findings tally with the research carried out by Arab political scientists in Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Jordan, Iran, indeed even Turkey. Research by Zogby International, an Arab-American private research institution that has recently surveyed attitudes about the US and other issues in eight Muslim countries show the same consistency.

However, according to Tessler, it also appears that "some in the Middle East believe the attacks of September 11 were justified". Such findings were obtained despite the condemnation of Islamic religious authorities the world over that the attacks were haram (prohibited) as innocent victims were killed.

Thus, a survey of 337 Sunni and Shia Muslims in Beirut, conducted in October and November 2001, found that fully 30 percent approved of the attacks and another 12 percent were unsure.

A journalistic inquiry carried out in Kuwait in summer 2002 reported that many Kuwaitis admitted to being happy about what happened to the US and that parties had been held in celebration.

Based on the above results, it is clear that the 'clash of civilisation' thesis peddled by Samuel Huntington of Harvard University is untenable. However, neither does the Muslim world have an easy peace with the US and the West.

In fact, the likelihood of Muslims being manipulated by Islamic extremists remains a social fact. It is therefore the onus of Muslim and non-Muslim governments to prevent, not just a 'clash', but confusion over the nature of Islam too.