We Should Reach out to Muslims

Do we, the United States, the West, have an argument with Islam? We surely have an argument with a lot of Muslims. The media in Muslim countries are full of anti-Americanism. Furthermore, most Muslim countries practice forms of government completely at odds with the political ideas cherished by Americans. They are despotic and intolerant. Muslim countries seem to conform to the pattern of so-called "shame" cultures, in which the rightness and wrongness of deeds are judged not by some moral compass, but by the reactions of onlookers.

And then there is the dreadful antisemitism with which Islam seems to be riddled. From professors of theology at Saudi universities to New York City cab drivers, it sometimes seems you only have to scratch a Muslim to find an antisemite of the vicious, irrational kind that largely disappeared from the Christian world half a century ago. Sophisticated Muslims tell you that this is really just anti-Zionism, a reaction to the indignities suffered by their co-religionists in Palestine. You can believe that if you want to. Muslim anti-Semites say "Zionist" when they're being very careful, but mostly they just say "Jew." Besides, Israel is an ethno-state, a Jewish homeland. To target your feelings precisely against that nation, leaving aside the Jews of other lands (most of whom, in any case, support Israel to some degree) is a job of emotional fine-tuning very few human beings are actually capable of. I am sure there are anti-Zionists who are not anti-Semitic (there is in fact a Judaic sect, the Neturei Karta, who are anti-Zionist), but I am also sure their numbers are small - among Muslims, I think, vanishingly small. And certainly Muslim anti-Semitism pre-dates the founding of the modern state of Isra...

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