Dear Dinesh,

Your illuminating piece about attitudes in the Muslim world skims too lightly over reality. The actual prospects for any reconciliation between Islam and anything approaching western-style constitutional democracy are dim for structural reasons. And your article essentially concludes that if our social attitudes were more conservative, like theirs, they would like us more - or at least not want to destroy us quite as fervently. But there is no refuge in conservatism for non-Muslims. Theirs is a creed that demands constant expansion by whatever means are available. There is no list in the Koran of acceptable alternate religions, social structures, or lifestyles: This world is Allah's, we are His subjects, and sinners are to be reproved and corrected, and often mutilated or killed - not only by the state, but by loyal followers. Finally, the attitude of the average Muslim on the street matters little - as constituted, a cabal of sorts runs these societies and the religious structures within them.

After offering a number of widely held Muslim mores that conservatives can appreciate, you note, "This book is a huge embarrassment to some conservatives who, based on no data and very little familiarity with the Muslim world, have been portraying Muslims as violent theocrats who reject modern science, modern democracy and modern capitalism and spend most of their day performing honor killings and genital mutilations."
This must be tongue in cheek. Your article discusses the bulk of Muslims, so you must be referring to the attitude of some conservatives toward the bulk of Muslims, or Muslims in general. Who are the people you are talking about, and what did they say? I know of no conservatives with a national voice who have come close to approaching this kind of blatant characterization of most Muslims. Even the widely criticized Michael Savage is careful to distinguish between the average Muslim and the extremists. If these quotes don't in fact exist, what is the point of making this claim?

Further, your basic argument here is fanciful. Nothing about the conservative social mores exhibited by observant Muslims has anything to do with Islam's embrace of science or democracy, nor its support of capitalism as a panacea for totalitarian instincts. In the wrong hands capitalism is not the natural expression of natural rights, but merely a powerful tool - ask the still avowedly communist Chinese. Regarding scientific curiosity, Mark Steyn notes that more books are translated into Italian than into Arabic. And few inventions of note have come out of the Arab world; Islam generally does not embrace or encourage modernity in any regard aside from technology and moving money around. Does anyone doubt that the entire region would be poor if not for oil?
Are they theocrats? They are, which is why they reject democracy. What they want is not freedom for individuals, they want only the freedom to 'elect' a Sharia government. Once in power, will they be tolerant of ideas that are contrary to Sharia? Not if history is any clue. The government may not actively stifle dissent, but there will be plenty of Muslim 'brown shirts' to do the job for them. How about the recently devised 'hijab' (circa 1970s), the lovely black garment that covers Muslim women head to toe? Is an elected democratic government which imposes this as a dress code for all women worth its weight in sand?

Most Muslims want to make the world a better place, and/or better secure their place, and their family's place, in the overall scheme (the now and the hereafter). The leaders, however, those pulling the strings of the 'movement Muslims', are after power. Perhaps power to fulfill what they see as some greater good - but first and foremost, power and more power.
There is no give or moderation possible here. The leaders, the fascist Muslims, see democracy as incongruous with Islam because democracy pre-supposes that people govern themselves, that they ought to make up their own laws. That very idea is an insult to Allah, who has provided the laws, Sharia, that he expects every human being on this planet to observe.
Even with 95% of the population of a Muslim country being somewhat moderate, the 5% can ruin the country's prospects for meaningful participatory self-governance. How real will Muslim democracy be when alternate ideas are constantly beaten or blown into submission by extremists? Any democratic flowering in the middle east and other Islamic countries will likely be short lived, or it will be democracy in name only. People will be able to elect their rulers - but only those who support Sharia.
Others will be terrorized into silence, or killed. The hard rump of Islam will consider them traitors. Government and the religion are one and the same, both are meant to be clearly defined and eternal. Islam appeals to many good-hearted people, but its unique blending of religion and state also speaks to the totalitarian mindset like no other religion or philosophy at work in the world today.

That said, any rational person has to be encouraged whenever positive transformation seems possible for Islamic societies. But that is largely a matter of information, people have to be aware, first, that another way of thinking about reality even exists. You suggest that this information flow has a downside, since the world gets our bad with our good, and that bad affects Muslims unlike it affects any other identifiable group on the planet: "Rather, it is the values of the cultural left, and the cultural imperialism that seeks to impose those values on reluctant Muslims, that is the real source of Muslim rage, and the best recruiting tool of the radical Muslims." You seem to argue that we are imposing our culture on Islamic countries, as if they are malleable, to the point where they are literally killing us for it.
We can impose our culture, but not our ethic of tolerance for minorities and minority thinking? And what is the mechanism of imposition? Is it not capitalism, which means by definition that no 'imposition' is involved? If Muslims embrace more capitalism, they will arguably see more of this influence, not less. America puts cultural garbage into the marketplace, but no one is shoving it down their throats, and the worst of it has to be obtained illegally in most if not all Muslim countries (drugs and pornography).
Furthermore, this proves my point about Muslim tolerance: These surveys speak for the bulk of Muslims, so only a small portion of Muslims are affected by western mores, becoming decadent as a result of western influence. Yet this affect upon a small segment of their population is enough to inspire Jihad and stimulate recruitment. So this is really about tolerance for the thinking and decisions of a small minority. What chafes at them is the fact that some small portion of their population is not toeing the line. Yet democracy is often about 51% steering the nation in a direction opposite what the other 49% wants. That reality cannot be reconciled with Islam and Sharia.

And Islam is not interested in rules of democracy and fair elections. It seeks complete victory, complete surrender to Islam and Sharia for every man, woman, and child walking the earth, and all those yet to be conceived. That is the self-stated goal of the religion. It is distinctly different from other religions which encourage evangelism. The rules tell Muslims that they _must_ push evangelism at the point of a sword. That fact, and their contempt for democracy as a mockery of Allah's clearly revealed plan for humanity, is why they do what they do. Not because of western mores.

The real western mores that concern them are some of the others that make it through the censorship filter. Mostly, they fear those about God.
Allah is a fearful taskmaster, who created people to fill some part that he has defined for us. The Christian God created people with free will to share love with Him, or not - they live their lives in accordance with their free will. He corrects and chastises, but ultimately He is love, and He proved it by defining for all time the substance of love - the willingness to suffer for another. A triune God knows love in His own Being, and creating angels and humans is a rational next step if He is intent on sharing love as widely as possible. We know love as the foundation of happiness: People can have everything the world has to offer and be miserable without love, and people can have love and very little else and still be happy and secure. Our God created Mankind for a beneficent reason - for our sake first, not His - so that we could also know love.

Allah gave humans free will in only the most limited sense. In the end, their free will is meaningless, all will bow. Our religion is about love and speaking to open ears, theirs is animated by an ethic of control, domination, and uniformity. One speaks loudly to the heart, the other does as well in some regards, but also whispers to the darkest recesses of the coldest minds.

In the end it is very basic. No rules told Eric Rudolph to bomb an abortion clinic. Our rules leave the handling of the wicked - except in defense of life and property - to the state and to God. The other side has _actual rules_ which do not subtly urge, but rather command loyal individual followers to take violence into the field and convert by threat of death. No magical words by hopeful Westerners can blot out or erase those words, they will forever be with humanity. They are what distinguishes Islam from every other significant religion. Consider the places in the world where violence is rampant and in many or most you will find radical Islam in the mix.
Wherever Islam is found, some small percentage of Muslims are actually willing to follow the actual rules to the letter. We know this as a fact. This small percentage is willing to blow up the apple-cart repeatedly because they actually believe what their religion actually says - that their violence is sanctioned by God, and will be rewarded with lots of sex, among other things.

I'm glad that Islam seems to encourage cultural mores similar to those widely shared in 1950s America, but perspective is important: It's the other things the religion encourages that are the problem. In Islam, as with other religions, God is going to sort us out in the end. But in the meantime, Allah has turned our world over to the faithful, who have been given license to hack their way through the rest of us (it matters not what you or I or every moderate Muslim think The Prophet was saying, it only matters what the extremist mind can see or infer). And until someone else from above tells them differently, the mission is a 'go'. There is nothing written about the prospects for failure. The effort will be ongoing until it succeeds.

Christians are told that most will not listen, most will not walk the difficult path of self-denial inherent in Christian transformation. Allah actually offers his followers the prospect that they can accomplish their mission completely, that every knee will in fact bow. This translates into a future forever plagued by Muslim extremism.

Kind regards,

TOTA