that it emerged in opposition to the more Westernized leaders in power after the Second World War, in fact the division in Muslim leadership goes back to the nineteenth century. In 1857, after the great uprisings in India against British rule, two rival models of leadership began to emerge. Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan, who created the Aligarh University on the model of Oxbridge, was a loyal servant of the Raj and wished to synthesize Islam with modernity; whereas the founders of the madrassah at Deoband near Delhi, fought the British during the uprisings, and their influential schools created networks throughout India and now influence groups like the Taliban. The schism in Muslim leadership is thus rooted in the indigenous response to modernity and the threatening presence of Western imperialism.At the opposite end of the spectrum to Osama bin Laden stands Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, whom died in 1948. He believed in human rights, and the rights of women and minorities. As a lawyer he upheld constitutional rule.In Britain, Sheik Omar Bakri's Khilafah, the journal of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement, which supports Osama, has attacked Jinnah as a kafir, or non-believer; to a Muslim, the greatest insult of all. Jinnah was accused of being an enemy of Allah and the Prophet because he supported women, Christians, and Hindus, and advocated democracy.Osama, bearded, in his traditional Muslim clothes, and speaking in Arabic of jihad; and Jinnah, clean shaven, in his Savile Row suit, English accent, and Lincoln's Inn legal education -- here, neatly, we have the two poles of Islam in direct opposition. The question is, which model will prevail in the next century?One of these two models will provide leadership for the more than one billion Muslims into the millennium. Ironically, through his seemingly senseless missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan, President Clinton has elevated Osama from one of the many obscure `freedom fighters' ...
