Not long ago I ran into a quote from Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian Muslim scholar and Al-Jazeera televangelist, in Turkey's controversial Islamist daily Vakit . The 80-year-old cleric was saying, “Victory is only possible by returning to Islam.”

The "victory" he was referring to was the one Muslims would have won against Israel. "The defeat of the Jewish State is possible," he reportedly declared in a sermon in Qatar, "only when Muslims fully return to the pure teaching of Islam."