A message from Islam.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: I write this letter because I am concerned about the future of Quadrant and you, yourself. I am also in difficult circumstances but not frightened, because you, as an atheist, will probably lack the courage to publish this letter.

Driving to my Roman hot spa, to have my crackling body rejuvenated, a message was passed on to me. I will explain the circumstances. The road I was travelling on is a small country road on the Hungarian side of the Austrian-Hungarian border. Although it is an insignificant road today, mainly for spa visitors, it is a historic road with a reputation full of mystery and associated with forebodings of ill. The last arrivals here were the Mongolian troops of Stalin; prior to them the janissaries of Mohamed II; before them the Tatars of Genghis Khan and the Huns of Attila, which followed soon after the legions of the Roman emperors. Along the road some ruins from the Bronze Age are also discernable and recently are rumours about the Muslims from the first century BC. As you can imagine it is not my favourite road, but the shortest from our old family home to the spa so I take the risk.

In one of the dark comers of the road, between two forests and deep trenches left behind from the Iron Curtain days, my car stops, for no apparent reason--darkness at noon. The car door opens and closes and I take off again. My eyesight is limited and I am frightened to take my eyes off the road but from the comer of my right eye I divine a Monsieur in blinking white caftan, his head covered with a red scarf, and smiling. "Bonjour, monsieur." I respond in my good diplomatic OECD French: "Bonjour, monsieur, qu'est ce que je peux faire pour vous?"

The mysterious man explains that he has only a short message to pass on to the Editor and readers of Quadrant and a special one for me: "You will be recruited for the good cause of the future Islamic world." I protest that I am an agnostic and unable to discern how I could be useful, but he ignores me and launches into a lengthy monologue while I try to follow that cursed road and listen to his French.

"We selected this road because Islam came to ...