To combat female jihadists. Reports Crossroads Arabia,

They are playing a part in the overall efforts of the Saudi government to discourage youths from adopting extremist ideologies, nipping the problem in the bud rather than having to fight them in the streets. The article points to the way Al-Qaeda has paid attention to women in its own outreach programs and how female extremists are more difficult to pull away from their ideologies.

See what you think.

I have not waded through all 90-plus pages of the Iraq Study Group’s report yet. I did see a lot of the ISG’s press conference yesterday, though not all of it. Fortunately, both the video and the transcript of the press conference are online (text, video) as is the full text of the report itself.

Quick link: Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay will be talking about Rummy, Gates and the Iraq Study Group on a live, online webcast today at 12 noon EST. Link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/strategypage.

I have to say that my first impression of the ISG, formed while listening to the press conference, was very close to that of Slate’s Shmuel Rosner:

More than anything else, these proposals are no more than a reiteration of the old James Baker formula for peace. A formula—just take a look at the region—that was not entirely successful in achieving its goals of peace and stability for Israel and its Arab neighbors. …

… the formula the committee outlines reads more like an ego trip than a serious, new proposal. “This approach worked effectively in the early 1990s,” the committee states. (Remember who was secretary of state in the early 1990s?) It also says, “The purpose of these meetings would be to negotiate peace as was done at the Madrid Conference in 1991.” (And who was the chief facilitator of the Madrid summit?)

Here’s why. Consider this segment of the Q & A:

*Q* You’re certainly a group of distinguished elder statesman. But tell me, why should the president give more weight to what you all have said, given, as I understand, you went to Iraq once, with the exception of Senator Robb; none of you made it out of the Green Zone - why should he give your recommendations any more weight than what he’s hearing from his commanders on the ground in Iraq?

*MR. HAMILTON:* The members of the Iraq Study Group are, I think, public servants of a distinguished record. We don’t pretend now, we did not pretend at the start to have expertise. We’ve put in a very intensive period of time. We have some judgments about the way this country works and the way our government works, and some considerable experience within our group on the Middle East.

We recognize that our report is only one.

There will be many recommendations. But the report will stand on its own and will be accepted or rejected on its own.

We tried to set forth here achievable goals. It’s a very easy thing to look at Iraq and sit down and set out a number of goals that really have no chance at all of being implemented. We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here are pragmatic public officials. We also hope that our report will help bridge the divide in this country on the Iraq war and will at least be a beginning of a consensus here, because without that consensus in the country, we do not think ultimately you can succeed in Iraq.

*MR. BAKER:* Let me add to that that this report by these - this bunch of has-beens up here is the only bipartisan report that’s out there.

The smirky, dismissive way that Baker said that last sentence (I did watch this part on TV) was very revealing, IMO, of his own idea of his own importance and brilliance. What Baker was really saying was, basically, “Are you kidding? I’m James Flipping Baker! Of course what I have to say is more important that other senior officials! Did I mention that I’m James Flipping Baker?”

Another flaw, IMO, is that the ISG seems to have begun with the baseline that its report would have to be unanimous. Baker emphasized its unanimity many times during the press conference. Unanimity was apparerently sought to buttress the other all-important buzzword, “bipartisan.” So the ISG set out from the beginning, I think, to make sure that its report was a unanimous, bipartisan product. I am reminded of a quote of Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.: “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”

I think the country would have been better served had the ISG delivered a majority and minority report. In fact, there could have easily been three reports: a consensus section, upon which all members were in broad, fundamental agreement, and a majority section and a minority section. Certainly retired Supreme Court justice Sanda Day O’Connor would have been comfortable with that. The USSC rarely renders unanimous decisions and yet no one dismisses its judgments simply because they are not unanimous.

I think that one of the inherent flaws of the ISG’s recommendations is revealed in this interchange:

*Q* Barbara Slavin of USA Today. One of the aspects of your report is outreach to Iran and Syria. What indications do you have from the discussions that you had in preparing the report that these two countries are prepared to be at all helpful? And I notice that you’ve taken the nuclear issue out of the equation. You say that should not be discussed in connection with Iraq. Why would the Iranians agree to come to a table and talk about Iraq unless the nuclear question and other questions were addressed?

*MR. BAKER:* … we didn’t get the feeling that Iran is chomping at the bit to come to the table with us to talk about Iraq, and in fact, we say there we think they very well might not. But we also say we ought to put it to them, though, so that the world will see the rejectionist attitude that they are projecting by that action.

With respect to Syria … There must be 10 or 11 or 12 things we say there that Syria - that we will be asking of Syria. The suggestion that somehow we’re going to sacrifice the investigations of Pierre Gemayel and assassinations of Gemayel and Hariri or others is just ridiculous.

*MR. HAMILTON:* … We have no exaggerated expectations of what can happen. We recognize that it’s not likely to happen quickly. …

And that’s the problem: on the one hand, the ISG says the US is facing a real crisis in Iraq and that time is short to change direction. Then, on the other, the ISG offers recommendations that even it (unanimously) says is “not likely to happen quickly.” The ISG wants to start withdrawing US combat units from Iraq by 2008, but did it stop to think that it’s highly unlikely for any of its regional initiatives and conferences even to be scheduled by then? The wheels of the gods and diplomats grind exceedingly slow, something James Baker should have remembered. Syria and Iraq have no obvious incentive to engage with us at all, a fact that Messrs. Baker and Hamilton tacitly admitted. To imagine that Assad and Ahmandinejad will jump at the chance to assist the US in achieving its goals in Iraq is the triumph of hope over experience. If anything, they’ll see the report as a sign of the slackening of American will and pretend to engage while making sure that the “peace process” drags on interminably. (We do, after all, have a track record of being victiom of that tactic, just recall the Paris peace talks with Hanoi, in which the North Vietnamese delegation spent most of a year doing nothing but arguing about the shape and height of the negotiation table.)

Richard Sanchez detailed the Syria stickiness, quoting the relevant section of the ISG report:

RECOMMENDATION 15: Concerning Syria, some elements of that negotiated peace should be:
— Syria’s full adherence to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 2006, which provides the framework for Lebanon to regain sovereign control over its territory.
— Syria’s full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon, especially those of Rafik Hariri and Pierre Gemayel.
— A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah and the use of Syrian territory for transshipment of Iranian weapons and aid to Hezbollah. (This step would do much to solve Israel’s problem with Hezbollah.)
— Syria’s use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force soldiers.
— A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon.
— A verifiable cessation of arms shipments from or transiting through Syria for Hamas and other radical Palestinian groups.
— A Syrian commitment to help obtain from Hamas an acknowledgment of Israel’s right to exist.
— Greater Syrian efforts to seal its border with Iraq.

RECOMMENDATION 16: In exchange for these actions and in the context of a full and secure peace agreement, the Israelis should return the Golan Heights, with a U.S. security guarantee for Israel that could include an international force on the border, including U.S. troops if requested by both parties.

How long could Syria take arguing excruciating details of each of the points of this recommendation? Literally years, if it wanted, and why wouldn’t want?

Israeli Prime Minyster Ehud Olmert has already rejected the heart of the internationalist approach of the report, and Olmert is no right-wing hawk.

Israel has rejected claims by a team of elder US statesmen that the Iraq crisis cannot be resolved unless the US also tackles the Arab-Israeli conflict.

PM Ehud Olmert, in his first reaction to the Iraq Study Group (ISG)report, said he had a “different view” and would not talk to Syria as the report recommends.

Conditions were not right for a resumption of negotiations, he said.

Further, Olmert was quick to assert that the Iraq conflict is unrelated to the Israel-Palestinian issue. It’s hard to disagree with Dr. Mitchell Bard’s observation:

The report asserts that the conflict is “inextricably linked” to the situation in Iraq. This is demonstrably false. If the conflict ended tomorrow or Israel disappeared, it would have no impact whatsoever on the situation in Iraq. The violence is based on internal political, social, economic and religious rivalries that are completely unrelated to Israel. The interjection of prescriptions for solving the Arab-Israeli conflict was apparently done to satisfy the authors’ desire to weigh in on issues that were beyond its mandate.

Bottom line: the ISG report offers some good ideas when it sticks to Iraq itself, especially the recommendation that American Military Training Teams serving with Iraqi army units be reinforced and broadened and when it opens the door to a near-term intensification of direct military by US forces against the insurgency. But it flops hard when it wanders afield, especially when it fails to recognize that Syria and Iran are vested in our failure in Iraq, not our success. The two nations are not potential partners, they are enemies.

Update: Robert Kaplan slices the ISG report up pretty thoroughly.

The Age reports the latest Islamist threat against England:

A MUSLIM convert plotted mass murder in Britain and the US then submitted his carefully laid plans to the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan for approval, a British court has heard.

Dhiren Barot, 34, planned to set off a radioactive dirty bomb and attack hotels, buildings and railway stations with gas bombs in cars, a Crown prosecutor told the court in what may be Britain’s most significant terrorist trial since the September 11 attacks on the US. …

Barot expressed excitement about detonating a bomb in a tube tunnel under the Thames. “Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here and actually rupture the river itself,” he wrote.

“This would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning etc that would result.”

He and seven alleged co-conspirators — who will stand trial in April — also planned to pack stretch limousines with gas canisters and explosives and detonate them in car parks under buildings, prosecutor Edmund Lawson, QC, told Woolwich Crown Court.

As chilling as these plans - which were carefully drawn and detailed - were, they are not the frightening thing al Qaeda et. al. may yet have up their sleeve. In 2002, al Qaeda claimed in a written statement, “We have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children - and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons … .”

The clock is ticking. Or should we say the clock is now racing?

Since 1947, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has published the “Doomsday Clock” to signify the threat level of nuclear weapons within the changes of international security. Midnight on the clock is atomic war. In those decades, the clock’s time has been adjusted 18 times. It was last adjusted in 2002 and currently stands at seven minutes til midnight.

The “Golden Hour” is a term used by trauma doctors and EMTs to refer to the sixty minutes after serious injury when medical treatment is most likely to succeed. Belmont Club once compared this term to the present security environment. The Golden Hour is this context is the time remaining until Islamist terrorists obtain WMDs, especially atomic weapons.

After this “Golden Hour” our actions will be severely constrained. In fact, once terrorists have acquired a steady source of WMDs, we will have no freedom of action at all. Or rather, the US will have as much room to maneuver as at that nightmare moment, envisioned during the Cold War, when NORAD might detect several thousand Soviet MIRVs inbound over the North Pole. In that instant, which thankfully never happened, the entire concept of choice would have become an illusion. The dreadful mechanism of retaliation would go into automatic effect with humans providing only the counterfeit of control. It follows that the War on Terror must not fail. Not if mankind is to live; not if the Muslim world is going to survive. Our current efforts carry the whole burden of future hopes and if we falter nothing will be left but to witness the consequences of our failure.

Is this overstating the consequences, severe though they would be, of Islamists obtaining and using one or more atomic weapons against us? Perhaps, but can we take that chance?

Joe Katzman picked up on that theme with the latest, distressing news from the Arab world, saying that we are now heading toward atomic perdition.

In Britain’s The Times Online, Richard Beeston reports that 4-6 Arab states announced that they were embarking on programs to master atomic technology [also RCI]:

“The countries involved were named by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Tunisia and the UAE have also shown interest….”

Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on nuclear proliferation… “If Iran was not on the path to a nuclear weapons capability you would probably not see this sudden rush [in the Arab world],” he said.

He’s almost right. If Iran was not on the path to a nuclear weapons capability with no meaningful checks in sight and none even imagined by the majority of Western policy-makers, plus tacit support from Russia and China, you probably would not see this sudden rush. But it is, and they do, and you’re seeing it. And if you believe the bit about powering de-salination plants, you’re dumber than all the dirt in Arabia.

So, concludes Joe, welcome to a glimpse of our future:

… One that features nuclear weapons in the hands of death-cult barbarians, the vast majority of whom grew up in an atmosphere glorifying suicide-martyrdom as mankind’s greatest moral achievement.

The world in which your children will live.

I reiterate my prediction of 10-100 million dead within the next 2 decades. Or maybe numbers don’t do it for you, and you’d rather read this story as a kind of mental intro to the sorts of futures to prepare for.

Have a nice day.

Sorry, too late for that. I hope this all-too-likely scenario helps explain why I maintained that the single most important issue facing America today is our war against Islamist terrorists.

Well, a Muslim cleric in Australia has said on the one hand that raped women were really asking for it and that therefore their rapists were not entirely to blame. Now the Saudis have sentenced a gang-rape victim to 90 lashes of the whip.

A Saudi court has sentenced a gang rape victim to 90 lashes of the whip because she was alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married.

The sentence was passed at the end of a trial in which the al- Qateef high criminal court convicted four Saudis convicted of the rape, sentencing them to prison terms and a total of 2,230 lashes.

The four, all married, were sentenced respectively to five years and 1,000 lashes, four years and 800 lashes, four years and 350 lashes, and one year and 80 lashes.

A fifth, married, man who was stated to have filmed the rape on his mobile phone still faces investigation. Two others alleged to have taken part in the rape evaded capture.

Saudi courts take marital status into account in sexual crimes. A male friend of the rape victim was also sentenced to 90 lashes for being alone with her in the car.

Can you make sense of this? I can’t. However, Arab culture of one of honor-shame, and also overwhelmingly patriarchal. A woman’s honor has nowhere to go but down, it can’t be increased, and is concerned almost exclusively with her sexual purity.

Maybe the poor woman should be glad she doesn’t live in another Arab country, like Jordan, where she might have actually been executed for being raped. More about that here.

I posted an invitation on Sept. 29 for readers to submit their thoughts about the compatibility, or not, of Islam with democracy and personal liberty. The invitation is still open. Herewith the first installment.

From Patrick Shaw:

Whether Islam is compatible with Democracy depends upon definitions. What is meant by “democracy”? What is meant by “Islam”? As Fareed Zakaria has pointed out, most people in the West confuse democracy and liberalism:

For almost a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy — a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. In fact, this latter bundle of freedoms — what might be termed constitutional liberalism — is theoretically different and historically distinct from democracy.

Democracy is only a set of rules and to say that Islam is incompatible with democracy is merely to argue that Islam could never win under those rules. The history shows that even extremist Islamic movements can win elections, such as the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria and Hamas in Gaza. If those elections result in laws imposing punitive taxes on religious minorities, legalizing slavery or forbidding women from leaving their homes without a spouse or parent, then the results may be democratic, but certainly not liberal.

Is Islam compatible with liberalism? I don’t know. From a Western viewpoint, Islam has both a religious and political component with which we are unaccustomed. While democracy is easy to define, liberalism essentially assumes some undefined space for the individual to act, free from the interference of state or society. Islam contemplates a beneficial role for the state in achieving individual fulfillment. Islam as a political movement is probably incompatible with liberalism, particularly as to issues such as violent jihad, dhimittude and rules of evidence in court proceedings.

Thomas Jefferson said that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are self-evident truths for all men. Abraham Lincoln tweaked the language a bit and argued that our nation was founded on such a “proposition.” A proposition is tested; it is not self-evident. The compatibility of Islam with liberal democracy is likewise neither proved nor disproved. I fear that those who assume otherwise (on both sides of this issue) will not be engaged in the effort to test the proposition.

Douglas Chandler:

Islam itself will either change or it will die. Right now there a few very brave Muslims that have written about this in print. As modern communication increases it’s penetration into the third world, the more discontent and discord will arise with in it.

I remember reading about back in the day when Eastern Europeans were able to see some American police TV shows from across the borders, that police officers giving Miranda warnings probably had more impact that any of the VOA broadcasts.

This will go on over the coming decades in the Middle East and elsewhere. I also remember reading on the Internet that when Aljazeera TV broadcast a demonstration of Iraqi’s against Americans that people in other countries commented that the American troops just stood there, and didn’t fire into the crowd. It will take a long, long, time but the autocrats of Islam are standing on loose sand.

Todd Sensing (a distant cousin) inverts the question:

Is Christianity compatible with capitalism?

If any group has beliefs which are not subject to question in a multicultural society; will their institutions be compatible with democracy? The answer seems to be no. The people who participate in most mature democracies seem to have more flexibility than a literal interpretation of their religious texts would indicate they would. Existing democracies are very good at discouraging participation by individuals who threaten existing power structures. There is no good reason to believe the same types of democracies wouldn’t emerge in countries with large fundamentalist Islamic majorities.

Via Glenn Reynolds, I read this post by Dean Esmay disputing the assertion that Islam is incompatible with democracy. I agree with him, but his argument is flawed. He writes,

This very statement-that Islam is incompatible with democracy … would be akin to, in World War II, declaring ourselves at war with “Germanic People,” “Latin People,” and “Southeast Asians.” Not Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and Tojo’s Japan. No, we would have declared that we were at war with anyone of Germanic or Latin descent, and anyone who happened to be short, yellow, and slant-eyed (to put it rudely and crassly).

Yes, Dean, it is rude and crass, all the more so because it is inapt and not applicable. Your analogy is a non-sequitur.

I am surprised because Dean has done a lot of studying and writing about Islam. But here he has equated a religious identity with an ethnic identity. This is crude stereotyping at its worst. Muslims are, like the Christian children’s song says of the Church, “red and yellow, black and white.” And Dean knows this.

To claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy is not akin to saying that Germans or Japanese are incompatible with democracy. It is like saying that Nazism or Bushido Shintoism were incompatible with democracy. Which they absolutely were.

But is Islam, qua Islam, incompatible with democracy? Actually, Dean never gets around in his teardown of Michelle Malkin to answer the question except to affirm that it is compatible. I think answer is not so clear as Dean makes it to be. Or, perhaps the answer is “it depends.”

Islam is compatible with democracy in some places in the world and not in others. It’s compatible in Turkey and India and some southwest Pacific places, but not compatible in Saudi Arabia or Egypt. The Iraqis are trying to make a go of it, but we don’t know whether they will succeed. And even in places like Turkey, democracy is decidedly not Jeffersonian.

Let us not fall into the trap of qualifying the answer by using the term, “Western-style” democracy, since that term is highly inexact. British democracy is not the same as American democracy and neither are very much like French democracy. They all share enough commonality that it is sensible to group them together (for example, an Enlightenment heritage) as long as we remember they are significantly dissimilar.

So, at the risk of sounding trite, whether Islam is compatible with democracy depends on what the definition of “democracy” is. And even in Europe and America, that definition has changed quite a bit over the last couple of centuries in Europe and America. Remember that at first, neither women nor Americans of African descent could vote in America and US senators were selected by state legislatures rather than directly elected by the state’s voters. In England until very recently, half the Parliament consisted of members born to the office and until Queen Victoria’s reign, the monarch really was the sovereign state embodied.

We should not expect that in any Muslim country today that democracy will mirror America’s. Tribal and clan identity will continue to be ways most of those societies are organized for a long time to come. Their democratic institutions, wherever they develop, will reflect that.

But let us be frank, at least with ourselves: the “problem” of the Muslim world, vis-a-vis democracy, resides in the Arab countries. (Even Iran is more democratic than Arab lands.) And the problem in those countries is not that they are “too Muslim” or not Western enough, but that they are not Muslim enough and they are too Western.

Prof. Bernard Lewis explains:

[I]t is helpful to step back and consider what Arab and Islamic society was like once and how it has been transformed in the modern age. The idea that how that society is now is how it has always been is totally false. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or the Assad family in Syria or the more friendly dictatorship of Mubarak in Egypt-all of these have no roots whatsoever in the Arab or in the Islamic past. Let me quote to you from a letter written in 1786-three years before the French Revolution-by Mssr. Count de Choiseul-Gouffier, the French ambassador in Istanbul, in which he is trying to explain why he is making rather slow progress with the tasks entrusted to him by his government in dealing with the Ottoman government. “Here,” he says, “things are not as in France where the king is sole master and does as he pleases.” “Here,” he says, “the sultan has to consult.” He has to consult with the former holders of high offices, with the leaders of various groups and so on. And this is a slow process. This scenario is something radically different than the common image of Middle Eastern government today. And it is a description that ceased to be true because of a number of changes that occurred.

Those changes included modernization in the early twentieth century, when,

… rulers decided that what they had to do was to modernize or Westernize. Their intentions were good, but the consequences were often disastrous. What they did was to increase the power of the state and the ruler enormously by placing at his disposal the whole modern apparatus of control, repression and indoctrination. At the same time, which was even worse, they limited or destroyed those forces in the traditional society that had previously limited the autocracy of the ruler.

Canadian journalist David Warren grew up in Pakistan. He wrote that Arab leaders most often,

… became socialists of one kind or another, for in the world of only a few decades ago, that very Western ideology of ‘socialism’ could still be presented as the coming thing, as a ‘scientific’ thing, the cutting edge of progress. Most came to believe that the best way to modernize their societies was through central planning, and that their own class was in effect the socialist vanguard.

But socialism worked even worse in the Arab countries than it worked in Europe: “None of [their] five-year plans ever worked. And the only thing that did work was the elites clinging to power, trying to Westernize or modernize their societies with increasing frustration.”

The second disaster for the Arab people was the opening of Syria-Lebanon to Nazism in 1940 when Vichy France allied itself with Germany. Since that area of the Middle East had been under French control, the Nazis walked in and Nazism took root.

Prof. Lewis also discusses the part Wahhabism has played in oppressing Muslim peoples, first in Arabia but now, flush with petrodollars, almost everywhere else in the world that Islam has gained a foothold. yet Wahabsim is not from the historical mainstream of Islam and absent oil wealth would still be an obscure, clan-based cult.

Bottom line: Islam as practiced and preached in much of the Muslim world today is incompatible with democracy of any recognizable kind. And Islamism (Islamic fascism) is no more compatible than Nazism. But the US, Britain and the West should not try to nurture democracy in Iraq or elsewhere that cleaves to a mainly Jeffersonian model. That is to guarantee failure. Prof. Lewis concludes,

The outlook at the moment is, I would say, very mixed. I think that the cause of developing free institutions-along their lines, not ours-is possible. One can see signs of its beginning in some countries. At the same time, the forces working against it are very powerful and well entrenched. And one of the greatest dangers is that on their side, they are firm and convinced and resolute. Whereas on our side, we are weak and undecided and irresolute. And in such a combat, it is not difficult to see which side will prevail.

I think that the effort is difficult and the outcome uncertain, but I think the effort must be made. Either we bring them freedom, or they destroy us.

Quite so.

Update: More thoughts here and an invitation to have your own thoughts posted under your byline on this site.

Now that the riots have died down in some Muslim lands as Pope Benedict’s Regensberg speech recedes from the headlines, it is time for serious-minded, responsible Americans and Muslims of Arab lands to take stock. Where do we go from here? We of the West no longer see such violence as an aberration that can be shrugged off by declarations by other Muslims that it really has nothing to do with Islam. Catholic nun Sister Leonella Sgorbati was shot four times in Mogadishu in a revenge attack for the Pope’s speech. Churches in the Middle East were attacked and some were set afire. A Somali Muslim cleric called on Muslims to kill the Pope.

When similar violence erupted over the Danish cartoons (instigated by Islamist agitators months after the cartoons were published), the reaction in the West was two sided (some might say two faced). On the one hand, many admitted that the cartoons of Mohammed were inflammatory but said that the Western tradtion of free speech was a trump card over the cartoons’ content. But about as many others said that the cartoons’ content trumped free speech. The legal mechanisms of Europe, of course, held to the latter.

But now, in the aftermath of the Pope’s speech, things are mostly different. It seems to me that most voices addressing the issue defend both the Pope’s right to say what he said, even if inflammatory, and what he said as well, inflammatory or not.

Furthermore, there is a growing recognition that Muslim riots are highly theatrical, demonstrating that their instigators have absorbed the lessons of the Western grievance culture and political correctness. But underscoring the swing of opinion to back the Pope in principle, even if not in detail, is simply a growing weariness that this game is getting old. Americans long ago learned to cope with religious differences through peaceful, public discourse; we simply don’t understand why Muslims can’t do the same. “Insult” either of Mohammed or Allah doesn’t wash as a pretense for violence. Mohammed is dead, can’t take offense himself and we don’t accept anger by proxy. And surely Allah is tough enough to shrug off a cartoon or two.

Muslim riots and violence against Christians only reinforce the perception that Islam is itself inclined toward violence. This perception is an urgent one for Muslims leaders to address.

On Sept. 19, Arab News editorialized,

WHATEVER views people may have about Pope Benedict’s controversial speech at Regensburg University last week, it underlines the urgent need for greater dialogue between people of different faiths. There is a dangerous chasm of ignorance about other faiths and it affects Muslims, Christians, Jews and practitioners of other religions equally; it is dangerous because it is so easily exploited by bigots and opportunists for their own political ends. …

The Danish cartoon row should have provided the stimulus to intensify efforts. It did not. Maybe now, in the full fury of the papal row, the message will get through. It has to. In today’s global village, we cannot afford to be ignorant of each other’s faiths. [via Crossroads Arabia]

This is quite correct. Increased dialog between well-intentioned parties is no miracle cure for violent extremism and certainly no quick resolution of ignorance. Nonetheless, it should be done. Most importantly, it must no longer be done simply by the elites. Conferences set up by and for elites become self justifying. Their attendees spend their careers going to conferences, reading learned papers and schmoozing with others of their professional class. In 1992, I attended a seminar held in my church by three professors of religion, faculty of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. One was Muslim, one Jewisha nd the third Christian. At one point the Muslim professor said that many religion professors and clerics of all three faiths were increasingly concluding that there was no need for more conferences for inter-religious dialog.

“We understand each other’s religion very well,” he said. “It’s not clear that more talking and more conferences are serving any productive purpose.” Quite so: the elites are talked out and have said to one another pretty much all they know. Arab News points out that some assert,

… there is a dialogue that has been going on for years. They can point to organizations such as C100, set up by the World Economic Forum to promote interfaith cooperation between the West and the Muslim world or to the Al-Azhar Permanent Committee for Dialogue with Monotheistic Religions. There is the Vatican-Muslim Committee set up by the Catholic Church and Al-Azhar, the Anglican Al-Azhar Dialogue Committee and a number of other organizations in countries around the world. There is even a day — Muslim Catholic Dialogue Day on Feb. 24 each year — adopted by Al-Azhar and the Vatican.

Commendable as all this is, it is not enough. If they were, there would not have been a Danish cartoons row earlier this year or a row now.

The number of Saudi students in America has tripled since 2002. “In fact, the number is comparable to the number of Saudis studying in American universities during the 1960s and 70s, which saw the highest number ever.”

Certainly Saudi students are welcome. But let’s not kid ourselves that their attendance at a typical American university does much to bridge the chasm of ignorance Arab News bemoans. American colleges are so enwrapped in political correctness and the desire not to give offense that they will serve more to reinforce Saudi students’ prejudices about America rather than correct them. It doesn’t help that even liberal American students and professors have their own prejudices about America and Arabs that they are more than happy to let Saudi students reinforce back at them. besides, Saudi college students in America are from the elites of their country, anyway. As Arab News said, new dialog “must involve the largest number of people,” reaching therefore beyond the elites. Can we find a way to immerse large numbers of ordinary people from our countries in one another’s cultures? Particularly should Muslim clerics and American clergy be involved since the chasm of ignorance among them is no less great than any others.

Reuel Marc Gerecht writes that we need,

… a real, painful but meaningful dialogue, which will surely cut both ways between the West and Islam. But what is most disturbing in the Western reaction to the pope’s speech … is the often well-intentioned refusal to talk openly about the other side. No one wants to offend, so we assume a public position of liberal tolerance, hoping that good-willed, nonconfrontational dialogue, which criticizes “our” possibly offensive behavior while downplaying “theirs,” will somehow lead to a more peaceful, ecumenical world.

We won’t talk about the history of jihad in Islam. We would rather emphasize that jihad can mean an internal moral struggle for believers, even though the most progressive, revisionist Muslim (unless he has been completely secularized in the West) knows perfectly well that when Muslims hear the word “jihad,” they proudly remember holy warriors, from the prophet Muhammad forward. We won’t probe too deeply, and certainly not critically, into how the Quran and the prophet’s traditions, as well as classical Islamic history, have given all believing Muslims certain common sentiments, passions and reflexes. We don’t even talk about how the post-Christian West’s great causes-nationalism, socialism, communism and fascism-entered Islam’s bloodstream and altered Muslim ethics, often catastrophically. Many in the West, on both right and left, prefer to see Osama bin Laden’s terrorism as a violent reaction to Western, particularly American, behavior. It is thus something that could be avoided. (Israel usually enters the discussion here.) We shy away from the more existential arguments that suggest that bin Laden’s popularity in Islamic lands is the product of an enormous religious and philosophical distemper that derives from the world being the reverse of what God had ordained: Muslims on top, non-Muslims down below.

But we need to talk and argue about these things. We need to stop treating Muslims like children, and viewing our public diplomacy with Islamic countries as popularity contests. Given what’s happened since 9/11, a dialogue of civilizations is certainly in order.

We may learn that not all our differences can be reconciled, but that is no reason to paper them over. We should not pretend we have no important differences in religion, government or culture. But both sides must learn to live peacefully with one another, managing our relations with respect, reason and consideration. In all the history of Islam and the West alike, this is the most urgent task before us.

Endnote: The non-elites are getting it: In Baghdad Muslims joined “Iraqi Christians during Sunday mass at a Roman Catholic church in Baghdad September 17, 2006. Iraq’s government called on Muslims on Saturday not to attack the country’s small Christian minority in response to remarks by Pope Benedict.”

The following is a Haider Ajina translation of a headline and article from the Iraqi Zahrira News Network (Ashirina) published on September 18th.

“Iraqi Muslims Pray with Christians in Churches to Show Togetherness & Partnership”

To show patriotism, true brotherhood and affirm the bond of belonging to one Iraq, which goes beyond religion or sect, a group of Iraqis (Christian and Muslim) attended a special service in the Roman Catholic church in Baghdad on Sunday the 17th of September. Muslims shared with Christian Catholics their prayer for almighty to clean the hearts and pray for unity. This came after increased anger by some Iraqi Muslims at statements made by the Holy Sea [sic].

As to the official response from the Iraqi government, Dr. Ali Al-Dabagh, official spokesperson for the government in Iraq called on Iraqis to exercise restraint and act wisely in response to statements by the Vatican Pope, in which he criticized Islam. Al-Dabagh said in a press conference, “The Iraqi government asks all who love God’s prophets and messengers to not act in a way which would harm our Christian brethren. They are our partners in this nation and are not to be judged by the statements of the Pope. The problem is that the Pope attributed behavior of some Islamic leaders of a certain era in history with Islam and its beliefs. If we were to look back in history, we will also find Christian leaders who committed crimes in the name of the cross. We do not hold Christians responsible for these actions since they were crimes of singular deviant leaders.

But then Dr. Al-Dabagh, being an elite, went off track:

What is needed now is an international agreement to punish all who insult God’s religions.

May God forbid it! That way lies only new inquisitions. What we need is societies based on civil manners, no matter what their religion, and an internalized understanding by the people that insults of religion do not justify violence in response.