I am referring to SAB's 'The unnerving justification for Islamic militancy' (Sept 8) as a somewhat divergent commentary on Brother Su's 'Militancy propaganda is pure Machiavellian' (Sept 7).

While the latter gives a critical view of Umno's current political strategy for survival as chartered by its current leaders, the former attempts at a rehash of Western media stereotyping of Islam as a militant insurgency.

Brother Su's view is quite accurate in describing a 'suicidal' Machiavellian mode for Umno's political future, and I say suicidal because it is apparent that the effects of current unjustified attacks against everything Islamic, militant or otherwise, in a bid to contain the leading opposition party PAS, will no doubt lead to the eventual destruction of the Muslim-Malay voting bloc.

The same strategist that planned the ouster of Anwar Ibrahim is now in charge of 'restructuring' the future voters of 2004, especially the youngsters in universities. We have the Education Ministry to thank for this latest affront to the voters intelligence. And Lee Kuan Yew will probably have to repeat his comment late in 2000 that this will indeed be another miscalculation, an "unmitigated disaster", by his erstwhile counterpart Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

As for the unnerved Westerners, who prefer to separate church and state or religion and politics, you must still admit that there has never been a kind word stated for anything Islamic in your mainstream press. Never mind that the ownership of the press and media are overwhelmingly Jewish, and perhaps some Christian, while all of us are indeed related to each other through the wisdom of our common teacher Nabi Ibrahim or the Prophet Abraham.

And what is it that is so repugnant about Islam to the Jewish-Christian West? I say that it is not militancy nor any of the propaganda we have been bombarded with. What causes the West to 'fear' Islam to the point of irrationality is due to Islam's prohibition finance based on riba or interest, this being taught as the ultimate wrong that can be done by humans against humans.

Militancy in Islam is actually quite well defined and should be better organised than the haphazard acts of helpless communities we currently see in Palestine and elsewhere. The Prophet Muhammad in his last sermon actually commanded Muslims to wage 'war' against these institutions that propagate the practise of interest in finance which just so happens to include the Federal Reserve and a whole host of fellow banking institutions.

It just so happens that most of these institutions are in the West. And many of the Muslims, and their wealth of natural resources including especially oil upon which the West needs, are in the East. Therefore East vs West.

This is a much more practical reason for a war - natural resources, finance and trade practices - similar to wars in times past. Religion just so happens to be somewhere in there and so there now in this generation we face the ultimate war by, theoretically, people of the same faith, People of the Book.