I am sorry I have not responded to your new letter sooner, but my day job here at PJM keeps me a bit busy. Moreover, to be completely honest, I was not really sure what I wanted to say. I have been rendered relatively speechless by events, violent and otherwise, in the Islamic world, trying to make heads or tails of them. By that I mean largely the Arab Islamic world — Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain, etc. — but also the always popular Islamic Republic of Iran, whose hideous government is close to the greatest misuse of religion in the history of the world.But it is those events that are prompting me now to write back in our ongoing discussion of Islam and the West and I hope you will bear with me as I try to connect them up. I am not happy and I am not optimistic.
Of course, at the beginning of the events in Egypt I was trying to be, optimistic that is. Democracy is generally a good thing and Mubarak a bad thing — simple (almost simple-minded) as those statements are. I picked up my Skype phone and made a call to an acquaintance of mine, the estimable blogger Sandmonkey (Mahmoud Salem), who was in the thick of things in Cairo. The interview I recorded with him made the rounds of the Internet and contained such information as the Muslim Brotherhood was not that heavily involved in the demonstrations and that both sides in Egypt were accusing the other of being under the influence of The Jews.
The latter did not surprise me. The former proved to be dead wrong. Several days later the Islamist al-Qaradawi was able to muster two million supporters in Tahrir Square, the largest demonstration, I believe, so far. The Al-Jazeera commentator banned Google-activist Wael Ghonim from the stage, as I imagine you know. Read more.