In the past week or so you must have read miles of text on things that have happened in the world since the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington a year ago this month. Now you may want to read a bit about things that were predicted but did not happen.

Here are some:

Afghanistan did not become another "Vietnam". The overwhelming majority of Afghans welcomed their liberation from the Taleban and have began rebuilding their lives in their own, messy but original, way.

The United States has not acted as a wounded elephant, going on a rampage, and attacking all and sundry. It has shown unexpected caution, even on the thorny issue of what to do about Saddam Hussein.

No Muslim country has fallen to a radical fundamentalist group. On the contrary there has been a distinct move away from extremist religious-political discourse. In the Sudan, the military-backed regime has disburdened itself from its fundamentalist allies and started an internal peace process brokered by the U.S. At the same time the Turabists have made their mea culpa and are trying to jettison their violent ideology. In Egypt the Gamma Islamiyah (Islamic Society) emirs have declared a complete change of strategy, renouncing terrorism. In Iran the hard-line mullahs are on the defensive, if not yet on the run. In Pakistan the main Islamist movement, led by Ghazi Hussein Ahmad, has renounced violence in pursuit of political goals. Even the Lebanese branch of the Hezbollah has denounced the 11 September attack and the ideology behind it.

There has been no "explosion" in the so-called " Arab street". In the past 12 months there have been 17 small anti-American demonstrations in the Muslim world, half the number that happened in 2000. Most of the 17 demonstrations took place in two Pakistani cities: Peshawar and Quetta last November and December. Instead there were also demonstrations of solidarity with the victims of terrorism in several major Islamic centers including Jakarta, Tehran, and Istanbul.

Al Qa’eda, or whoever else carried out the September 11 attacks, has not been able to make another major deadly move. A dozen or so people have been killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan and 20 people died in another terror operation in Tunisia. But none could be linked with al Qa’eda.

The so-called "clash of civilizations" did not happen. On the contrary, more and more people both in the world of Islam and in the West now realize that they are all in the same boat. There is a rush in the West to read about Islam and try to understand it. In the world of Islam there is a corresponding thirst for knowledge about the West that, after all, shares the same historical space of civilization.

Suicide bombings have not liberated one inch of the West Bank or Gaza. On the contrary they have reinforced the occupation. The Palestinian silent, or silenced, majority knows that an alternative strategy is needed to achieve independence and statehood.

Despite an explosion of Islamophobia in many parts of the world there has been no decline in the rising curve of conversions to Islam, even in the United States. This shows that people, using their faculty of reason, can distinguish between what some misguided Muslims do and Islam as a personal faith. ENDS AMIR TAHERI 1902

Editor’s note: Mr. Taheri is a leading Iranian journalist. He wrote the above article for the National Review Online, which was published by the Paris-based Iran va Jahan website on 18 September