The fall of communism and the end of the Cold War should have resulted in victory for democracy around the world, but today militant Islam is proving to be a challenging foe.
In the blood-soaked aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, many people believed that the West, along with the post-Communist world, would close ranks in the face of the Islamist terrorist threat, united by common values of freedom and democracy. Many people believed that the "progressive" part of mankind would take special steps to strengthen the democratic model and to promote it in countries that have not adhered to democratic values. However, no export of democracy took place: the scale did not even slightly tilt toward the democratic model offered by the West in any of the countries that militant terrorist Islam considers as its "natural" environment. On the contrary, militant Islam is more and more often seen as the alternative, and an ever more widely attractive model for social development. The most striking example of the spread of this tendency is the victory of the Hamas movement in the Palestinian elections, as well as this movement's strengthened position in neighboring Lebanon through Hezbollah. This group has been strengthened to such an extent that during the military conflict with Israel last year, the Islamic forces were not defeated.
