Okay, it’s a matter of taste. The health wires have been all gaga in recent days or weeks about the benefits of drinking a small amount of red wine every day. Researchers say that chemical compounds in the wine benefit the cardiovascular system and medical chemists have been working to isolate what those compounds are. The answer? Compounds belonging to the flavenol antioxidant family, particularly procyanidins. But not all red wines are created (that is, fermented) equal:

Procyanidins, compounds commonly found in red wine, are good for your blood vessels and are probably one of the factors contributing towards the long life spans of the people from the southwest of France and Sardinia, say researchers from the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary, University of London. …

The researchers also found that levels of procyanidins are not the same in all wines. Wines from southwest France and Sardinia, where it is still made in the traditional way, tend to have higher levels of the compound - in some cases their levels were 10 times as high as wines from elsewhere.

People should bear in mind that the daily glass of wine could have varying degrees of benefit, depending on where it came from. The researchers specifically noticed the higher levels of procyanidins from the Nuoro area in Sardinia and the Gers region, Midi-Pyrenees, south west France. On average, the scientists found those two areas had procyanidin levels five times higher than wines from Spain, South America, the USA and Australia.

The difference seems to be how and how long the grape juice was fermented. The longer the better, and wines from the identified regions are fermented for 3-4 weeks. Other wineries tend to push the feremntation process to make it last only a week or less. If you like Cabernet Sauvignon, you’re in luck. Those grapes and Nebbelio grapes “made the wines with the highest levels of procyanidins.” How much wine does it take to ingest an effective amount? About a quarter-liter per day, call it one and a quarter cups.

As for the much-ballyhooed compound resveratrol,

“There are some fascinating effects of resveratrol in animal systems,” notes plant biochemist Alan Crozier of the University of Glasgow. “To get similar doses into humans through red wine, you would have to consume more than 1,000 liters of red wine a day.”

I called a local wine store to shop prices. Some labels of Cabernet Sauvignon are pretty expensive, well over $100, and the store I called had them. But the lady said Blackstone Cabernet Sauvignon was very good, and cost only $20 per liter. So that’s $5 per day for the recommended dose of procyanidins. That makes an annual cost of $1,825, which is my ledger is major coin for only one element of a meal.

As it turns out, though, procyanidins are found in a fair number of foods other than red wine, such as walnuts, some berries and apples. But the world champion concentrator of procyanidins is chocolate. The linkage between chocolate and heart health has been well known for years. Like wine, though, not just any chocolate will do. The form of chocolate with the highest concentration of procyanidins is cocoa powder. This does not include hot chocolate mix or any kind of powder (or solid) processed with alkali. Cocoa powder is very bitter, of course, which is why chocolate products are cut with sweeteners of one kind or another, sugar being the most common, of course.

Milk is another, and that’s why milk chocolate is a poor source of procyanidins. The higher content of cocoa is found in dark chocolate, the darker the better. Let’s take, for example, Hershey’s Extra Dark, which is so high in procyanidins (60 percent cocoa content) that Hershey’s has a special logo for it.

In terms of ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity), which is a measure of the amount of antioxidant capacity in a food or substance, a standard serving of dark chocolate (37g) provides more antioxidant power than the standard servings of many other well-known antioxidant-containing foods, including blueberries, walnuts and raisins.

Hershey says that 37 grams of its Extra Dark chocolate provides the same antioxidant content as four ounces of red wine. But four ounces of wine is only 40 percent of the amount you need per day. How much chocolate would you need to eat the equal 250ml of Cabernet Sauvignon or like wine?

One serving of Extra Dark is four pieces, equaling 39 grams of chocolate. That works out to just under 10 pieces to compare to a quarter-liter of wine. (That’s a lot of chocolate to eat every day.) Amazon sells 12 boxes of 17 pieces each for $30.89. Ten pieces per day therefore costs $1.51, a lot cheaper than the $5 per day that Cabernet Sauvignon costs. But the cost in calories is high. Ten Extra Dark gives you more than 500 calories, too. Per day.

What about higher concentrated chocolate? Well, it’s hard to see how you can get higher than 99 percent cocoa content. That’s what Michel Cluizel Noir Infini has. It costs $67.95 on clearance for a 1-kilogram box (2.2 pounds). That makes it 1.65 times as concentrated in cocoa as Hershey’s Extra Dark. So I would presume you’d have to eat 1.65 times less to attain the same amount of procyanidins as 390 grams of E.D. That’s 236 grams per day, or bascially one-fourth box per day, coming to a daily cost of $16, a lot more than the Cabernet Sauvignon’s $5 cost.

But wait! Lindt makes a bar with 85 percent cocoa, 100 grams (3.5 oz.) listing for only $2.69. I bought one at Target today for $1.99. It is 1.42 times as concentrated as Extra Dark. To ingest the equivalent of 250ml of red wine would take 274 grams of Lindt per day. That costs $5.45 per day at Target, still more than the Cabernet Sauvignon.

The principal - or at least most public - face behind all this research is Professor Roger Corder, a Brit who got on my good side right away by observing,

“We’ve got to stop treating people as stupid, which is what the Government loves to do. People are quite clever but they need to be educated and understand what it is about their health and lifestyle that’s important for a longer life. They must stop expecting a safety net - the National Health Service - to do everything, and actually start looking after themselves.”

Amen to that! As for chocolate, Corder “eats about one 100-gram bar a week, usually Lindt’s 85 per cent. He recommends no more than 25gm, or 2.5 squares, a day.” Of course, Corder has a book:

I have written at some length on my opposition to the draft, especially and most recently that being proposed by US Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY 15th), HR 163.

For the record, I thought I’d post the doctrinal position of the United Methodist Church on conscription. It is found in the UMC’s Social Principles (link):

V. Military Conscription, Training, and Service

(1) Conscription. We affirm our historic opposition to compulsory military training and service. We urge that military conscription laws be repealed; we also warn that elements of compulsion in any national service program will jeopardize seriously the service motive and introduce new forms of coercion into national life. We advocate and will continue to work for the inclusion of the abolition of military conscription in disarmament agreements.

Note well: it is not only a military draft that the UMC officially opposes, but exactly what Rangel and 15 other Members want to make law: universal federal service.

Mitchell Zais is a retired Army brigadier general who is the president at Newberry College in South Carolina. On Nov. 9 he gave a speech at the college in which he stated that “most of our problems in Iraq stem from a flawed strategy that has been in place since the beginning of the war.” I won’t paste the ehole speech here, yoo may read it at the link, but here are his central points:

Our strategy in Iraq has been:

1) Fight the war on the cheap.

2) Ask the ground forces to perform missions that are more suitably performed by other branches of the American government.

3) Inconvenience the American people as little as possible.

4) Continue to fund the Air Force and Navy at the same levels that they have been funded at for the last 30 years while shortchanging the Army and Marines who are doing all of the fighting.

No wonder the war is not going well.

Read the whole thing.

Hey buddy, can you spare $800,000,000,000 for Rangel’s mandatory-service corps?

Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964 as the Republican nominee. I was was not even 10 then so obviously didn’t vote in that election. In the late 70s I was a first lieutenant in the Army and was passing time with my NCOs one day. The topic turned, in a non-serious way, to politics. A staff sergeant commented, “The Democrats told me that if I voted for Goldwater in ‘64, I’d wind up fighting in Vietnam. They were right.”

I suppose it was an old joke even then (at least in form if not in specifics) for just yesterday Glenn Reynolds wrote, “PEOPLE TOLD ME IN 2004 THAT IF I VOTED FOR BUSH, before you know it there’d be moves to bring back a draft. And, sure enough, I voted for Bush and now they’re talking about bringing back the draft. . . .”

He is referring, of course, to US rep. Charlie Rangel’s (D.-NY) bill to reinstate the military draft. Rangel has had such a bill before Congress before, and in fact the Republicans actually managed to bring his bill to a floor vote in October 2004, where, interestingly, Rangel voted against it. But before we heap the scorn upon Rangel that he so richly deserves for this stupidity, let us also observe that three Republicans beat Rangel to the punch with their introdction of the “Universal Military Training and Service Act of 2001, Bill # H.R.3598,” which is still alive in the House Armed Services Committee. (”Alive” being a very generous term since it’s been glued to the bottom of the committee’s in-box for five years.) The bill,

Makes it the obligation of male citizens and residents between 18 and 22 to receive basic military training and education as a member of the armed forces unless otherwise exempt under this Act. Permits female citizens and residents between such ages to volunteer for enlistment in the armed forces, with acceptance at the discretion of the Secretary of the military department concerned. Limits the period of training to between six months and a year. Permits transfers after basic training of such conscripts/volunteers to national and community service programs to finish the term of service. Provides educational services and Montgomery GI benefits to persons upon completion of their national service. Uses the existing Selective Service System and local boards for induction. Sets forth criteria for deferments, postponements, and exemptions, including high school, hardship, disability, and health. Entitles inductees to request a particular service branch. Excludes conscientious objectors from combatant training, but otherwise requires them to take basic training before a permitted transfer to a national service rogram.

To be fair, this bill was introduced only three months after 9/11, when no one knew what the extent or duration of America’s new war would be or what manpower would be required. It was probably meant as a “just in case” measure that, having already been written and staffed, could be put through the Congress fairly quickly if the defense department asked for it. Since no one in DOD or the rest of the administration has ever asked for a draft, and since President Bush promised bluntly in the 2004 campaign that his second term would not see one, this bill is dead as Julius Caesar.

Rangel first introduced his draft legilsation in January 2003. It is HR 163, “Universal National Service Act of 2003.”

Declares that it is the obligation of every U.S. citizen, and every other person residing in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 26 to perform a two-year period of national service, unless exempted, either as a member of an active or reserve component of the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that promotes national defense. Requires induction into national service by the President. Sets forth provisions governing: (1) induction deferments, postponements, and exemptions, including exemption of a conscientious objector from military service that includes combatant training; and (2) discharge following national service. Amends the Military Selective Service Act to authorize the military registration of females.

Get that? Rangel wants women to be subject to the draft as well as men. Everyone would have to serve two years. The text of the bill itself provides for exemptions of military service only if someone is mentally or physically unfit “under section 505 of title 10, United States Code,” the legislation that presently governs enlistment in the armed forces. No such exemption is stated for service other than military service. Anyone who volunteers for service in the armed forces or is enrolled at a service academy is likewise exempted from mandatory induction, provided s/he completes the term of service satisfactorily. There is no exemption for coscientious objection except that those person, “when inducted, [will] participate in military service that does not include any combatant training component.”

There is a deferment for high school students until they graduate or turn 20, whichever comes first. There is no deferment at all for college students.

Read the text of the bill for yourself. I see no loopholes for anyone to weasel out of some kind of service, although do wonder how many more exemptions the Congress will be able to think of by the time this bill ever passed (if it ever does pass).

There are so many dumb things about this bill that I hardly know where to begin. But we have to start somewhere.

The bill says, “It is the obligation of every citizen of the United States, and every other person residing in the United States, who is between the ages of 18 and 26 to perform a period of national service as prescribed in this Act… .”

A. The bill only defers, does not exempt, persons from induction because of extreme hardship physical or mental disability. Although section 5 of the bill does require “every person” before induction to be “physically and mentally examined” and “classified as to fitness to perform national service.” The executive branch determines fitness standards.

B. The bill dragoons US citizens, resident aliens and illegal aliens alike into its compulsory-service net. I suppose one might argue that it would provide a disincentive for illegals to stay or come, but let’s get real. Almost all of them are in an underground mode now and the government does not even know who they are, their names or where they live.

C. Absent truly dire national emergency, this coercive form of service is not “service” at all. It is, charitably, involuntary servitude to the all-powerful State. No wonder Scott Horton of Anti-war.com characterized it thus:

Charles Rangel thinks that having a society where human beings own each other is perfectly okay as long as the slaves are destroying lives and property for the state rather than producing things for private plantation owners.

….Don’t you see? Conscription will deter wars by providing the politicians with a bottomless supply of cannon fodder. And by the new magic principle of “everything works how Charlie wants,” the rest of the politicians will be somehow unable to swing exemptions for their own children.

D. The cost would be astronomical. The US Census data for 2000 show that there are approximately 7,900,000 men aged 18-21 inclusive, and Rangel’s bill persecutes both men and women the prime years for a draft. So the bill sweeps up tens of millions of people, all of whom must be paid. Does Rangel think they will be paid a “living wage” or a slave wage? They also have to be fed and housed and transported and care for medically. Can you say, “biggest ongoing budget deficit in the history of the world”?

The number of women age 18-21 is very close to that of men. So men and women between 18-21 number about 16,000,000. We won’t even worry for now about the five years’ worth of people between 21-26. Because Rangel’s bill ends high-school deferments between ages 18-20, it would seem that up to 4,000,000 men and women per year would be eligible for induction into either the armed forces or civilian service. Note that Rangel’s bill gives the executive the authority to limit only the number of inductees into the armed services, but not the authority to limit the number inducted into civilian, national service (”Persons covered by subsection (a) who are not selected for military service under subsection (d) shall perform their national service obligation under this Act in a civilian capacity pursuant to” … “national or community service and homeland security.”)

So we have 8,000,000 men and women on active duty or service at any one time, including we would assume the NCOs and officers of the armed forces and their career equivalents in civilian service. What might the total be for directly-paid salaries alone, not including associated costs?

Brand new privates in the Army receive $1,178 per month for the first four months and $1,273 per month after that. By the end of their second year they pay grade E3 and make - again, this is directly-paid salary - $1,501 per month. In the middle is pay grade E2, which pays $1,427. Let’s use that figure as the overall average.

Eight million salaries paying $1,427 per month equals an astonishing 1.3699 to the 11th power dollars. That’s $136,990,000,000 per year just for salaries.

One Hundred Thirty-Six Billion, Nine Hundred Ninety Million dollars per year for salaries alone. But almost a million careerists, at least, will each be making considerably more. So a more realistic salary figure is a cool quarter-trillion dollars.

Overhead costs could easily add another 50 percent to that, although probably most overhead would be sunk costs that would be incurred at the beginning and at a much lower levellater. Even so, we may charitably add $25 billion per year. Now we’re up $275 billion per year.

And this is almost certainly a very low estimate. In 2006, of the defense department’s total budget of $416 billion, more than one-fourth is categorized as “Grand Total Direct - Military Personnel Costs.” That $109 billion (rounded). Some of those costs are military-specific, but most would have direct equivalence in a drafted civilian-service corps. DOD has about 1.7 million military of all types and a large civilian-employee base, all totaling about a fourth of the number of active duty that Rangel envisions. By the time operating and maintenance costs are folded in - and certainly the pork that every Senator and Representative would tack on - the costs of Rangel’s folly would surely nudge $800 billion per year and only go up from there.

No wonder Joe Gandelman asks, “Just who is ADVISING Rangel? Karl Rove?”

What is this man thinking? That he can score points against Bush and the Republicans by trying to get everyone on the government dole for at least two years, or that 18-20 year olds should all have a turn on the Statist plantation for two years?

Finally, can you imagine the enormous mischief six million or so 18-20 year old men and women will cause on America if they are loosed to do something, darn it, to earn their keep? Do what? No, really - apart from the two million military members, what are six million teenagers going to do every year working for the government. What?

The Missus and I went to see Casino Royale Friday. Is it, as some critics have said, the best Bond movie yet and is Daniel Craig the best Bond so far?

Yes on both counts.

Why? it’s the intangibles, I think. Early in the series, Bond films became not much different than later, filmed “graphic novels.” That is to say, most Bond movies have been celluloid comic books. The prolepsis for this trend was in the very first Bond flick, Dr. No, and by You Only Live Twice was well established. Both of Timothy Dalton’s turns as Bond, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, fit this description, as do, well, all four of Pierce Brosnan’s.

Not all Bond films are animated comic books, though. Substitute “al Qaeda” for SPECTRE and Thunderball becomes frighteningly plausible. From Russia With Love is pretty much a straightforward spy thriller. Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun are low on the comic book quotient even though much of the action in the latter is just silly. 1983’s Octopussy had another frighteningly plausible plotl; like Thunderball it involved smuggling an atomic warhead into the West. The ending sequence of Ninja-Amazon-circus acrobats was silly, though.

Anyway, enough of memory lane, because Casino hits the reset button. It pretends and so must viewers that the previous 20 Bond movies don’t exist. The clock begins anew as the movie begins before Bond has even been awarded double-oh status - and informs the viewer just how he did attain it. Judi Dench returns as M, but there is no connection to her previous appearances as M. It is she who awards Bond his 007 identity. All these events take place in modern days, none are are flashbacks.

Rather than rehash the plot and storyline, which you can read a gazillion other places in the internet, let me simply offer some impressions.

The screenplay is very good. It’s not the best Bond screenplay (that honor lies with Thunderball) but it’s very near the top. Craig is a better actor in his movie than Brosnan or Dalton or Roger Moore were in theirs. Right now I’d call it a draw with Sean Connery.

Casino’s Bond is very physical. This James Bond is a brawler and a very good one at that. The fisticuffs in this movie are the best executed of any Bond film I remember. Bond hits and gets hit. He bleeds and gets bruised. After a fight his knuckles are raw and red. The physicality of the movie dominates its action sequences. There is no car chase but there is an outstanding foot chase, even if it is a bit Jackie Chan-ish in places.

Neither Moneypenny nor Q appear. Not a loss; they would have been misfits in this movie. Besides, though John Cleese did a credible Q, no one can really fill Desmond Llewelyn’s shoes. And Samantha Bond as Moneypenny was hopeless.

The reviewers are gaga over Eva Green as Casino’s main Bond girl, Vesper Lynd. Sorry, no, she’s merely competent in the role and (IMO) not nearly are DD Gorgeous as the press seems determined to describe her. The best Bond girl for both the role and her looks remains the incomparable Luciana Paluzzi as Thunderball’s Fiona Volpe. Speaking of Bond women, there are no female forms in Casino’s title sequences, a first for the series, I think.

License to kill? Yes, of course. Some reviewers have said that Casino’s Bond is the coldest-blooded killer yet. In the beginning he doesn’t merely kill, he assassinates. I’d say he is as cold as any but consider Sean Connery in Dr. No, awaiting hours through the night for the arrival of Professor Dent, shooting him, then carefully aiming and shooting him again. Or Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only, kicking a bad guy’s teetering Mercedes off a cliff. FYEO also has, IMO the most spectacular stunt ever done in a Bond film, a hundred yard plunge into space by the piton-climbing Bond.

Though my favorite Bond film remains Thunderball, Casino Royale is better, I reluctantly conclude. And in this movie for this screenplay Daniel Craig surpasses even Sean Connery in any of his movies. I’ll wait until Craig has one or two Bond flicks under his belt before definitively deciding he surpasses Connery.

The movie made almost $15 million yesterday.

From the MOAA email newsletter:

Symposium Panelists Dubious on Draft
Over 300 MOAA stalwarts and guests braved tornadic winds and driving rain to attend MOAA’s Nov. 16 Military Professional Symposium, at which a distinguished panel of experts discussed whether the all-volunteer force (AVF) can be sustained in an extended conflict. Participants included:

* Gen. Barry McCaffrey, USA-Ret., former advisor to the Secretary of State and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations;
* Hon. William Chatfield, Director of the Selective Service System;
* Hon. Mike Dominguez, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness;
* Lt. Gen. Mike Rochelle, USA, Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, and
* Mr. Tom Donnelly, senior advisor for the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic International Studies.

House Armed Services Committee Ranking Minority Member (and Chairman-to-be in next year’s 110th Congress) Ike Skelton (D-MO), who had been scheduled as the introductory speaker, had to cancel when a House leadership meeting was rescheduled for the same time as the symposium.

If attendees expected any of the panelists to call for reinstitution of the draft, they were disappointed. One thing the panelists appeared to agree on - especially in their answers to multiple questioners on that topic after their prepared remarks - was their belief that Congress and the country wouldn’t stand for that in any scenario short of a war for national survival.

The panelists all agreed that the AVF today is clearly highly motivated, of superb quality, and more capable than the conscription force. General McCaffrey said that shortly after the draft was ended in the early 1970s, “You couldn’t find a general in the Army who liked the all-volunteer force. But 10 years later, when they saw the quality they were getting, you couldn’t find one who wanted to go back to the draft.”

McCaffrey provided most of the symposium’s fireworks, expressing strong views on adjustments in recruiting standards and force sizes.

“Generally speaking, we’ve quadrupled the number of lowest mental category recruits, we’ve quadrupled the number of non-high school graduates, and we’re granting 6,000 to 8,000 more moral waivers,” he said. “When you tell me that you think enlisting a 42-year-old grandmother is the right thing to do, you don’t understand what we’re doing. We need 19-year-old boys and girls in good health to carry guns and fight.”

Several panelists highlighted an issue that MOAA has pushed for years - that today’s forces are far too small for the huge missions that have been thrust upon them. “Are we undermanned?” asked McCaffrey. “Of course we are…we need our resources and our strategy to match our rhetoric…the active duty Army is 80,000 soldiers short, the Marines are 25,000 short, Coast Guard ought to [have] 75,000 people, the border patrol ought to be 45,000, and the National Guard 600,000.”

On the positive side, Gen. Rochelle cited MOAA’s aggressive support for Army Recruiting Command and its importance in helping achieve the Army’s FY2006 recruiting mission. Considering the question whether the Army could get the volunteers to grow substantially in the current challenging recruiting environment without a draft, Gen. Rochelle asserted, “Unquestionably we can do it. We are richest nation on the face of the planet, the most gifted nation on the face of the planet. And we can do anything for which we as a nation have the political will.”

We hope to have a video summary of the symposium available on MOAA’s Web site in the near future.

Gen. McCaffrey also has kindly granted permission for MOAA to use a clip in which he turned to MOAA President VADM Norb Ryan, Jr (USN-Ret) and praised MOAA’s weekly legislative update. “You have the only computer-generated newsletter that I read in Washington,” he said.

The arguments for a draft are very weak and the arguments against it are very strong. I wrote in some detail about that in January 2003.

Okay, take all the pre-release hype with huge doses of NaCl. But that is the hype, that Daniel Craig, playing James Bond in Casino Royale, is the only one of six Bond actors to give Connery a real run for his money. The main thing going for him, says This Is London, is that ” he is the first Bond since Connery to exude an air of menace. He’s also funnier than Roger Moore, and more of a credibly ruthless womaniser than Pierce Brosnan.”

Well, they have a point there. Beginning with Connery’s immediate successor, the flash-and-gone George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond actors have all been pretty boys. That didn’t quite apply to Connery and for sure doesn’t apply to Craig, whose looks are far from Hollywood classic.

Casino Royale premiers in general release today. The Missus and I plan to see it tonight. I’ll post a review after.

“… can we not then join the dhimmi in singing “Kumbaya?”

No. No “Kumbaya” singing.

Part of a conversation recorded at Jihadi sniper post 13, Ramadi.

You may recall that in September Pope Benedict gave a speech in Germany in which he stated that “Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul,” and in which he referred to a 14th- and 15th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus.

The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war. He said, I quote, ” ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.

As may be expected, this speech inflamed the fabled “Muslim street” and Muslim clerics and leaders of Islamic nation demanded apologies from the Pope. The “street” rioted across most of Islamia, as directed by their leaders.

Via email I received from Michael Edward McNeil some highly relevant links as this story continues. First stop, David Warren:

An extraordinary thing happened [in mid-October]. Thirty-eight Muslim scholars and chief muftis, from across the Muslim world, jointly replied to the Pope’s speech at Regensburg (and more have associated their names with this document, since). It was presented to the Vatican’s envoy at Amman; the full text in English is available through the Islamica magazine website, the Catholic website, Chiesa, and elsewhere. I look through the list of signatories, and they are a “who’s who” of the learned leaders of a faith that has always aspired to be led by its most learned. …

The signatories renounced and condemned violence against Christians in the name of Islam. They accepted without qualification the Pope’s post-Regensburg clarifications, and both accepted and applauded his call for dialogue. They unambiguously denounced and rejected all terrorist interpretations of the word “jihad”; they insisted on the priority of Surah 2:256 of the Koran (”There is no compulsion in religion”), stating explicitly that it is not obviated by later Koranic passages or Hadiths.

Firas Ahmad, senior editor of Islamica Magazine, notes the paucity of coverage this extraordinary document received in the Western media:

On October 12th 38 highly respected and theologically diverse clerics from the Muslim world wrote what is widely considered a respectful and engaging “Open Letter” to the Pope in response to his controversial comments about Islam made during his Regensburg address in September. Not only was the letter of historical significance, but it also represented an articulate and reasoned invitation to dialogue from Muslims with the Papacy on matters of theology and faith. The signatories included top scholars from Bosnia, Croatia, Egypt, the United States, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Kosovo, Oman, Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Iran.

Around the same time, a single Muslim cleric in Australia, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, delivered a sermon to about 500 followers where he allegedly compared some women who do not dress modestly to uncovered meat being left out for a cat.

I wonder which story received more news coverage.

The open letter signed by 38 scholars, who represent all eight major schools of thought in the Islam, is more representative of the global Muslim community than this one lone Australian cleric. However, judging by the prevailing media coverage any casual reader would think the exact opposite.

Buddy, take a number and wait in line.

Anyway, the six-page letter really is quite extraordinary, collegial in tone and highly civilized in content and reason. It is online here. Its major headings are:

There is no Compulsion in Religion
God’s Transcendence
The Use of Reason
What is “Holy War”?
Forced Conversion
Something New?
“The Experts”
Christianity and Islam

Read the whole thing; it’s very informative. I have to wonder, though: if the signing scholars are the foremost of the Islamic world, then are they teaching this sort of thing to the Muslim ummah?