10 November 2049

FROM: Ali Nidal ibn Karim
Islamist Islands North Atlantic Council
Belgravia, London SW1


TO: Abdul Aziz al-Filistani
Islamist Studies Union
Mohammed Qutb Towers, Unit 26
Zarqawi College,
Cambridge, NA1

SUBJECT: January Lecture

DATE: 10 November 2049


Dear Abdul:

Thank you for your invitation to Chair the Islamist Studies Union in January. I accept, although overland travel for a man my age is difficult, and I'm still burdened by my new book "Sceptres and Scimitars". But, I've been told that you have over 20,000 members now, with the Anglo-Saxon faculty heavily represented, so I will definitely come. Fifty years of Jihad contains at least four lectures. More on the subject of my first lecture in a moment.

You probably know that I played a part in changing the name of Magdalen College to Zarqawi College over twenty years ago. Our renewal work in that department actually met only token resistance. The superannuated Christian instituitions and iconography had already been emptied of meaning by the people of these lands, so the actual demolition of their symbolism and, even, architecture, was easy. But to us, Christianity even in its secular and mass cult forms was suffocating. Something as seemingly innocuous as their Christ's image on an outer garment or a cross necklace worn by a depraved popular singer was anathema to us.

In my address you've suggested I avoid mention of the mass-killings and riots of blood-letting of thirty years ago, if only that the young express some revulsion at these admonitions. They think that political and population majorities were enough to declare victory.

But you must recall that this region has a history of such cleansing and renewal. Force is more natural to them, upon reflection, to punctuate authority. It was necessary. At any rate, no one really cared, at the time, either about the Jews or about the infidels who adhered to morbid and blasphemous faiths. Today, most of the lament about, and memory of, those days come from the old of this land and not from the young. Indeed, conversion has helped. Look at the numbers! Blessings and peace be upon you!

We have many things to talk about. The Catholic problem, and the confused Pope we installed in Rome. America and the chaos in the Southwest and old Spanish territories is discouraging, I know. But the west and east coasts of America, and some northern interior places are ours, especially where there are the strong, erosive currents of a large university.

And that brings me to the subject of my first lecture. I've been considering, for some time, the possibility that their theology, once sanitized of their God, made undifferentiated goodness, or fanatical tolerance of all ways of life equally moral. It was not long before the "intelligentsia" as they called them (the style-makers as we know them) could be made to embrace and advance any idea at all, even if it had the smell of self-extinction about it. Strange. It's not rational to declare victory over a culture that was slowly committing suicide, so we must avoid spiritual pride.

But keep in mind, Abdul, that the people who might elicit your sympathy, those we've corrected and saved and eliminated, were people with a very low price tag. We recognized very early that they craved the comforts of life so much that, eventually, not killing them was perceived as a gift. Allah Akhbar.

Yours,

Ali Nidal