Richard Landes, a scrupulous scholar of Christian religious messianism and professor of history at Boston University, has over the last years turned his attention to the eschatologic and political melange that is contemporary Islam. He comes to this precise breadth naturally, being the son of the grand historian David Landes, of Prometheus Unbound, Revolution in Time and Wealth and Poverty of Nations repute.

Still, Richard is his own man and he got the distorted essence of modern Muslim politics earlier than most. This may be a weird analogy. But it is as clear in his head as it is in the heads of Pope Benedict and TNR contributing editor Paul Berman, to take two altogether serious minds of our time.

The eschatologic cast of a political movement always turns a bit rancid. It did so with the 17th century Levelers, and it is so with the mobs of frenzied and frustrated souls who are God's faithful army in the Muslim world. As it happens, whenever Israel defends itself, these folk lose whatever balance they might have retained in the decades since the Iranian revolution in Shi'ism and the multiple gangs that now increasingly up the face of Sunni Islam.

Landes runs his own website. Here are two blogs, considered and full of indisputable facts, about Israel's war with those who see themselves as its tormentors and destroyers.