Strange bedfellows.

On the eve of the American election, I am reminded of a landmark event that occurred here in London a year ago. In November 2003, a sinister political marriage was contracted between the remnants of the Marxist-Leninist Left and militant Islam, though portents of this dark union had been around since Sept 11 2001.

Still, by the time George W. Bush arrived for a state visit, awareness of this new threat was beginning to dawn. But just. The union was heralded by a mass demonstration organised by the Stop-the War Coalition--the public face of Hate America International--which had been organising countless street 'events' against the war on terror and in support of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

So who are these Taliban and Saddam nostalgics?

The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members, 18 from various hard left groups: Communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castroists. Three belong to the radical wing of the Labour party. There are eight radical Islamists and four leftist ecologists.

Coalition chairman Andrew Murray is a former employee of the Soviet Novosty Agency and leader in the British Communist party. Co-chair is Muhammad Asalm Ijaz of the London Council of Mosques. Also included are leaders from the Socialist Workers' party, the Muslim Parliament, the Al-awdah group (an outfit close to Yasser Arafat), "Just Peace" (another militant Arab group) and the "Green Socialist Network." One prominent coalition member is George Galloway, an ex-Labour-party MP currently under investigation for illegally receiving funds from Saddam Hussein.

Founded in London in September 2001, the coalition was initially an exclusively leftist concoction of remnants of the Stalinist "peace movement" of the 1950s. What the coalition didn't anticipate was its success. Or that it would be joined by militant Islamist groups, a move once considered unthinkable, since the Left had always regarded Islam as a relic of feudalism and Islamists regard leftists as atheist enemies who should be put to the sword.

Nor did many notice that the first to support this flourishing alliance was none other than Ayman Al Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command. Or that it received the blessing of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal" who, in his book Revolutionary Islam, says he advised Osama bin Laden to forge an alliance with "all guerrilla, terrorist and other revolutionary groups throughout the world, regardless of their religious or ideological beliefs."

According to Carlos, Islam is the only force in the world today capable of persuading large numbers of people to become "volunteers" for suicide attacks against the U.S. "Only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the US," he reasons.

So it was, precisely one year ago, that a massive anti-Bush rally in London marked the emergence of a coalition of militant Islam and the radical Left, supported by others who hate the US for different reasons. Among them were free-abortion supporters, anti-globalization radicals, Kyoto advocates, and anti-Semites who believe that Jews control the United States.

Predictably, of the thousands who turned out, most were what Lenin called "the useful idiots", men and women whose political naivete makes them easy targets for opportunistic experts in agitprop. The point of the alliance?

Power. Of course. These people can smell it, sense it ready to be seized from the hands of the weak, the confused, the frightened. All that is required is persistence, endless violence and the sacrifice of it-doesn't-matter-how-many-lives. Just like Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam and all the other genocidal counterfeits of history willing to annihilate multitudes to achieve their ends.

Today, in a western world made dangerously soft and morally illiterate by relativist values advanced by such charismatic leaders as Pierre Trudeau, foolishness abounds. Evil is simply a matter of opinion.

But what has Iraq got to do with this? you ask. Everything. In the first speech ever given by an official of the Holy See to the United Nations General Assembly, the Vatican again criticised the US-led war in Iraq.

"The position of the Holy See concerning the military action of 2002-2003 is well known," said Vatican Foreign Minister Monsignor Giovanni Lajolo on September 30. "Everyone can see that it did not lead to a safer world either inside or outside Iraq." Condemning terrorism as an of man, Monsignor Lajolo told the Assembly: "It seems obvious that terrorism can only be effectively challenged through a concerted multinational approach ... and not through the politics of unilateralism."

Appointed last year by Pope John Paul II, the monsignor said that while the fight against terrorism meant "neutralising its active breeding grounds", more important was "long-term action, directed with foresight and patience, at its roots."

But what are those roots?

The Left holds that the roots of terrorism lie in poverty and inequality (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) and that it can be obliterated through humanist solutions. The Right holds that force must inevitably be used, pacifism having been historically discredited as ineffective, if not entirely useless.

Yet what is terrorism, if not a form of destructive energy resulting from man's sinfulness, for which there is no balm except repentance and forgiveness--though the secular world is unlikely to ever agree to such an assessment. All of which means that as long as the true roots of terrorism remain universally misunderstood, defeating it is impossible.

Almost everywhere there is terrorism today, ideologies directly opposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ are involved. Yet western governments persist in the systematic removal of all traces of Christianity from their cultures and leadership, oblivious to the fact they are fatally disarming themselves of the very spiritual armour they are sure to need.

The result? These same governments now lack the moral purpose, courage, clarity and resolve to oppose those who would steal their freedom--One-Worlders (simply communism by other means) who have now joined forces with homicidal zealots whose goal is the creation of a geopolitical theocracy of Islam, stretching from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean and beyond.

Paula Adamick is a professional journalist. She writes from London, England, where she publishes the monthly, Canada Post.