“God is always on the side of the big battalions.” - Anon Why, oh why, didn’t Allah read the script his faithful so thoughtfully prepared for him? This used to be a common occurrence on the North-West frontier of the British Raj, when itinerant preachers periodically used to arouse the Pashtun tribes to drive the infidel Angrezi to the sea. All this was supposed to be at Allah’s direction. These crusades were supposed to cleanse the land of the unbelievers’ influence and establish a dar-ul-Islam in its place. What then always happened was that the English unbelievers, forewarned by their excellent intelligence network, invariably rallied and successfully routed the invading tribal levies – usually inflicting heavy casualties on them in the process. How the Mullahs of those days explained away these periodic failures would have been very interesting to hear. Allah certainly wasn’t on-script in these many disasters, especially du...