Will Hezbollah overtake Al Qaeda in the standings?

I've blogged before about how Al Qaeda is like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Without using the baseball metaphor, Bernard Haykel argues in today's New York Times that Hezbollah could supplant them in the eyes of many Sunni and Shiite Muslims. This isn't necessarily a good thing, accoding to Haykel: With Israel at war with Hezbollah, where, you might wonder, is Al Qaeda? From all appearances on the Web sites frequented by its sympathizers, which I frequently monitor, Al Qaeda is sitting, unhappily and uneasily, on the sidelines, watching a movement antithetical to its philosophy steal its thunder. That might sound like good news. But it is more likely an ominous sign.... Hezbollah has taken the lead on the most incendiary issue for jihadis of all stripes: the fight against Israel. Many Sunnis are therefore rallying to Hezbollah?s side, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. The Saudi cleric Salman al-Awda has defied his government?s anti-Hezbollah position, writing on his Web site that ?this is not the time to express our differences with the Shiites because we are all confronted by our greater enemy, the criminal Jews and Zionists.? For Al Qaeda, it is a time of panic. The group?s Web sites are abuzz with messages and questions about how to respond to Hezbollah?s success. One sympathizer asks whether, even knowing that the Shiites are traitors and the accomplices of the infidel Americans in Iraq, it is permissible to say a prayer for Hezbollah. He is told to curse Hezbollah along with Islam?s other enemies. Several of Al Qaeda?s ideologues have issued official statements explaining Hezbollah?s actions and telling followers how to respond to them. The gist of their argument is that the Shiites are conspiring to destroy Islam and to resuscitate Persian imperial rule over the Middle East and ultimately the world. The ideologues label this effort the ?Sassanian-Safavid conspiracy,? in reference to the Sassanians, a pre-Islamic Iranian dynasty, and to the Safavids, a Shiite dynasty that ruled Iran and parts of Iraq from 1501 till 1736. They go on to argue that thanks to the United States (the leader of the Zionist-Crusader conspiracy), Iraq has been handed over to the Shiites, who are now wantonly massacring the country?s Sunnis. Syria is already led by a Shiite heretic, President Bashar al-Assad, whose policies harm the country?s Sunni majority. Hezbollah, according to these analyses, seeks to dupe ordinary Muslims into believing that the Shiites are defending Islam?s holiest cause, Palestine, in order to cover for the wholesale Shiite alliance with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately, this theory goes, the Shiites will fail in their efforts because the Israelis and Americans will destroy them once their role in the broader Zionist-Crusader conspiracy is accomplished. And then God will assure the success of the Sunni Muslims and the defeat of the Zionists and Crusaders. In the meantime, no Muslim should be fooled by Hezbollah, whose members have never fought the infidel on any of the real battlefronts, like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya or Kashmir. The proper attitude for Muslims to adopt is to dissociate themselves completely from the Shiites. This analysis ? conspiratorial, bizarre and uncompelling, except to the most diehard radicals ? signals an important defeat for Al Qaeda?s public relations campaign. Read the whole thing to see why this could spell trouble for the west.