BABY, MEET BATHWATER :

Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N. (Colum Lynch, June 17, 2002, The Washington Post)

Conservative U.S. Christian organizations have joined forces with Islamic governments to halt the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays, women and children at United Nations conferences.

The new alliance, which coalesced during the past year, has received a major boost from the Bush administration, which appointed antiabortion activists to key positions on U.S. delegations to U.N. conferences on global economic and social policy.

But it has been largely galvanized by conservative Christians who have set aside their doctrinal differences, cemented ties with the Vatican and cultivated fresh links with a powerful bloc of more than 50 moderate and hard-line Islamic governments, including Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Iran. [...]

The alliance of conservative Islamic states and Christian organizations has placed the Bush administration in the awkward position of siding with some of its most reviled adversaries -- including Iraq and Iran -- in a cultural skirmish against its closest European allies, which broadly support expanding sexual and political rights.

U.S. and Iranian officials even huddled during coffee breaks at the U.N. summit on children in New York last month, according to U.N. diplomats.

But the partnership also has provided the administration an opportunity to demonstrate that it shares many social values with Islam at a time when the United States is being criticized in the Muslim world for its continued support of Israel and the nine-month-old war on terrorism.

As we bring greater pressure to bear on the Islamic world to reform its religious beliefs so as to allow secular politics and economics, it is also necessary to maintain the ethical core of Islam, lest Muslim nations become as demoralized as Europe. This is an extraordinarily difficult straddle, trying to balance individual freedom and moral responsibility, one which only the U.S. even approaches pulling off.

UPDATE :
Teaching Tolerance: Tunisia School Offers a Moderate Exegesis of Islam (YAROSLAV TROFIMOV, June 17, 2002, The Wall Street Journal)

Youssouf Savane had a clear and common opinion about his faith when he came to study religious law four years ago at Zeitouna, an Islamic university that bills itself as the oldest in the world. Only Islam is the truth, he thought, and all other teachings are false.

Now, Mr. Savane is carrying back a different message to his native Mali, a predominantly Muslim West African country. "I know I was wrong," says Mr. Savane, a jeans-clad 24-year-old who studied such topics as comparative religion, Darwin's theory of evolution and Freudian psychoanalysis at Zeitouna. "Other religions are just as valid and have their own proofs."

Mr. Savane's words may be considered heresy in much of the Islamic world. But Zeitouna's 2,000 students, most of whom are preparing to become preachers at mosques or schoolteachers of Islam, are encouraged to think such tolerant thoughts. A rare but prominent exception to the fundamentalist trend sweeping the Arab world, Zeitouna is trying to bring Islam in line with modern society.

Zeitouna is at the center of the authoritarian Tunisian government's push to become a pioneer of pro-Western secularism in the Arab world -- and to keep home-grown, militant Islamist opposition at bay. Unlike in most Islamic countries, hardly any women in this nation of 9.6 million people wear a veil -- in fact, veils are prohibited in schools and government offices. Alcohol is widely available, mosques are locked up outside prayer hours, and birth control is actively encouraged. An army of topless European tourists -- a major source of revenue for the government -- occupies Tunisia's Mediterranean beaches.

This, for instance, seems to be a case of swinging too far in the direction of demoralization to really be healthy for the society in the long run. It would be a tragedy if the Islamic world becomes as debased as Europe without at least attempting the far more difficult task of becoming more like America first. If the only real choice that Muslims are offered is between a state like the current Iran or one like France, it is not self-evident Westernizing would make sense.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 18, 2002 8:14 AM