Dean's World

I don't know the topic well enough to tell you if Hitch has nailed it here, but he sure seems as if he's done his homework. I invite substantive comments as to whether and how he is wrong.

Why should we care? He suggests a couple of reasons, but here's one that will capture the imagination of some regular readers here... and annoy some, and probably a contributor or two, as well:

All over the non-Muslim world, we hear incessant demands that those who believe in the literal truth of the Quran be granted "respect." We are supposed to watch what we say about Islam, lest by any chance we be considered "offensive." A fair number of authors and academics in the West now have to live under police protection or endure prosecution in the courts for not observing this taboo with sufficient care. A stupid term — Islamophobia — has been put into circulation to try and suggest that a foul prejudice lurks behind any misgivings about Islam's infallible "message."

Well, this idiotic masochism has to be dropped. There may have been a handful of ugly incidents, provoked by lumpen elements, after certain episodes of Muslim terrorism. But no true secularist or even Christian has been involved in anything like the torching of a mosque. (The last time that such a thing did happen on any scale — in Bosnia — the United States and Britain intervened militarily to put a stop to it. We also overthrew the Taliban, which was slaughtering the Hazara Shiite minority in Afghanistan.) But where are the denunciations from centers of Sunni and Shiite authority of the daily murder and torture of Islamic co-religionists? Of the regular desecration of holy sites and holy books? Of the paranoid insults thrown so carelessly and callously by one Muslim group at another? This mounting ghastliness is a bit more worthy of condemnation, surely, than a few Danish cartoons or a false rumor about a profaned copy of the Quran in Guantanamo. The civilized world — yes I do mean to say that — should find its own voice and state firmly to Muslim leaders and citizens that respect is something to be earned and not demanded with menace.

Earned, he explains, by Muslims taking a breather from brutally slaughtering each other.

Hot on the heels of our friendly discussion of the last couple of days, Instapundit publishes this:

IN THE MAIL: Zachary Karabell's Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence. From the blurb:

Historians have so often focused on religious conflict — crusades, jihads, pogroms — that Karabell fears many readers have forgotten how often the devout have lived in peace with those of different faiths. . . . Karabell concedes that some regimes have pursued ecumenical harmony merely to secure economic and political advantage, but he insists that such harmony actually reflects peace-fostering doctrines central to all of the Abrahamic faiths. Applying such doctrines, Karabell concedes, has grown more difficult in a modern world transformed by the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism.

I noted way back in the early days of InstaPundit that many people have a simplistic view of Islam — one fostered, ironically, by the fundamentalists, who want everyone to think that they're the true and only face of Islam. This book looks as if it might be a useful corrective, though of course the people who really need to be persuaded are unlikely to read it.

Sounds right, doesn't it? But there is another complicating factor besides Islamic fundamentalism, and I can't imagine the book doesn't acknowledge it as such: The refusal of the Jews, or a large number of them, to submit to vassal status and rely on the (ultimately, always withdrawn) kindness of strangers for their physical survival. To the extent that the likes of James Baker say "solving the Palestine problem" is at the root of the current conflict, including Iraq, he is right. The problem is that this formula is a code for many, especially Islamic fundamentalists (but also Baathists and other Arab rejectionists of no motivating religious stripe at all), of a "solution" that is a little more "final" than the Jews of Palestine will accept.

The thickness (to give them the benefit of the doubt) of his like, and that of Jimmy Carter, in stating only half the problem is what Israel's supporters object to so strenuously. To the extent that civilized nations refuse to go along with this "solution," they become viewed as intractable enemies of this sort of Islam, and of this sort of "moderate" or "neutral" arrogance, as well. This is one way of encapsulating the whole problem.

Is there anyone stuck in this concrete who can break out of it? Glenn linked earlier to this extraordinary link, to Iranian academics protesting the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran, an act of great political importance and bravery, suggesting the answer could be yes. This gives one some cause for hope. In many senses, Iran — non-Arab center of the Shiite world — holds the key. But who knows what's behind the door?