Sitting cross-legged in their stocking feet in Cairo's vast, thousand-year-old El Azhar Mosque, Islam's two most important military chiefs, Egypt's General Mohammed Naguib and Syria's Colonel Adib Shishekly, heard an ancient, chilling summons. "A jihad (holy war) for the right and defense of the freedoms of people," demanded the sheik in his sermon. The jihad was designed to support "our brothers in North Africa in their struggle against imperialism" and to teach France an "eloquent lesson."
A thousand years ago, some earlier Moslem version of a Naguib and a Shishekly might have responded by rattling their damascene blades, leaping to...
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