The Associated Press photograph of a killer in Baghdad shooting a pistol into the head of one kneeling election worker--while another lies crumpled on the street--illuminates the face of our enemy. It is the face of Muslim fascists murdering Muslim liberals.

The victims were public servants--agents of the will of the Iraqi people. The force that would commit such a cardinal sin against human rights did so in cold blood and in deliberate, full view of the world. Thirty heavily armed men allowed a photographer to shoot a whole roll of film, right under their guns. Their aim was propaganda as well as murder.

These killers learned their techniques of propaganda and terror, of organization by cells and public acts of violence, from the fascists who occupied much of the Middle East from the 1920s on, and from communists afterward. The well-known "clash of civilizations" does not so much pit a Jewish-Christian-humanist West against an Islamic East. It pits a small but ruthless Muslim minority, whose methods are fascist, against a large Muslim majority whose political views are unformed but who want their children to share in the prosperity and freedom they see elsewhere.

Recently, I was asked to give a week of lectures on religion and democracy to the 40 field commanders of the Sudanese Resistance. I had expected most to be Christians or adherents of native African religions, but half or more were Muslims. All were tough leaders. All spoke of the cruelties and tortures of the Khartoum regime.

Two of the Muslim colonels had been university professors, one in Canada, the other in France. Why, one of them asked, when we want only to be devout Muslims, do the radicals in Khartoum quote against us some text from the Koran and tell us we are opposing the Prophet? Why must we practice the barbaric punishments of the seventh or 11th century?
 
"I am no expert in Islam," I replied, "but I can tell you how we Catholics have come to reject practices that were common centuries ago among our own ancestors." And I laid out some arguments. Why, they went on, did Osama bin Laden choose the methods of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin? Why not the International Declaration of Human Rights? Why the worst of modernity, not the best?
 
It is true that Islam has a violent history in most lands it has conquered since the time of Mohammad, and so the agitators for jihad and terror cite authorities and precedents on their side. Furthermore, of the wars being fought in Africa and Asia and the Middle East today, nearly all involve Muslims committed to terrorism. As one Muslim journalist wrote this past year: "It is certainly true that not all Muslims are terrorists, however, sadly we say that the majority of terrorists in the world are Muslims."
 
Yet in the face of such violence, we must not allow ourselves to assume that great numbers of Muslims do not crave the best opportunities of our age or allow ourselves to believe, wrongly, that freedom, individual dignity, equality under the law and the rule of law are fated to belong only to Christians, Jews and humanists.
 
There is precedent on the majority side, too. Islam is a religion of reward and punishment; hence, in some sense, of personal responsibility. Islam has a long tradition of working from consultation and consensus. There are heavy religious proscriptions against taking the lives of civilians. And in recent years currents of democratic thought, often repressed, have begun stirring in institutes, journal articles and democratic associations. A small number of Islamic democracies, mostly in Asia, have experienced peaceful changes of government. Something is blowing in the wind.

This month alone, in two major hot spots of the Arab world--Palestine and Iraq--elections are taking place. In Iraq, the most important Shiite clerics--leaders of some 65% of the Iraqi population--have urged participation in Jan. 30's vote and insisted that it not be delayed. Yes, they stand to gain by the result, but the temporary constitution they helped enact has remarkable safeguards for minorities. The Shiites well remember that, for more than 30 years, they suffered at the hands of a contemptuous Sunni minority, against whom they had no democratic protections.
 
In the great battle being fought in the soul of the Muslim majority, which form of Islam will prevail: the fascist, terrorist sort--or the sort compatible with democracy and human rights? The welcome answer will come, I believe, if only the terrorists can be kept from preventing it.

Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy and director of social and political studies at AEI.