Thanks for the suggestion. Of course, since there is no central authority in Islam--no Pope--the expressions of that Iman would reflect not a unified Islam (there is no such thing) but only a very limited segment of Islam. While the Arab world is important to the world of Islam, it is only a small part. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world and only 260 million live in Arabia. In your role as a wordsmith, you have to accept that words have meaning and though people on these boards use the terms "Islamic," Middle Eastern, and "Arab" interchageably they do not mean the same thing.

According to Freedom House, the majority of the world's Muslims live in electoral democracies today. For those Americans who think we are bringing democracy to the Muslim world, 800 million Muslims would be unaware of it. The combination of Hubris and Ignorance might be a fatal mixture.

We watch the neo con railing against the excesses of Saddam and his two brutal sons and telling us their excesses justify our invasion of Iraq, even though there were no weapons of mass destruction and there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq and the US was certainly not a risk from any Iraqi threat. At the same time these sunshine patriots happily ignore the 1982 slaughter of 30,000 in the Syrian city of Hama by the Damascus leadership. This horror eclipses Saddams use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds--but is conveniently overlooked.

And, as far as going to the Mosque--that is simply a place to pray, not a theological center like a church. The person who leads the prayer in the mosque is ususally the one who best knows the prayer. There is no central religious authority. There is no universally obeyed priestly hieerarchy. The sole exception is the cult of personality that conferred a position of highest authority on Khomeini-but he is dead. Iran does support a heirarchy but this is an exception in Islam and Persian religion and Arab religion are in continual conflict other than the unification of traditions the Bush administration has forged.

I am most willing to talk to an Iman, Mullah or devout Muslim that can help me understand that freedom isn't limited to the freedom of Iran to have a theocratic state, prohibit women from voting or even driving cars, freedom to require prayer five times a day, and freedom to exclude all other religions and punish non-believers by death.

Thanks for the suggestion. Publius