WHEN ABDUL COMES MARCHING HOME AGAIN

Debating terror in Hamas's backyard (David Frum, National Post, February 28th, 2006)

Iraq is shaken almost to destruction by the hatreds and contradictions tearing apart the Middle East and the Islamic world. Qatar cheerfully walks on both sides of the street at the same time, welcoming the American fleet and an Israeli diplomatic mission -- and simultaneously funding the Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who justifies suicide bombings against U.S. forces and Israeli civilians, and the al-Jazeera satellite channel.

I came to Doha to participate in the Doha debates, an amazing exercise in free speech sponsored by the outspoken wife of the ruling sheikh, Sheikha Mozah. Eight times a year, the Sheikha's foundation invites four panelists from around the world to discuss all sides of issues on which most Arab societies only allow one official view. The debates are hosted by the famously fearless British interviewer Tim Sebastian and broadcast worldwide on the BBC. (The debate in which I took part can be seen this coming weekend.) They take place in the atrium of the Qatar Foundation in Doha's Education City before a live audience of university students.

The topic set before this month's panel was: "Resolved, this House believes the international community must accept Hamas as a partner." Joining me on the negative was my friend Salim Mansur of the University of Western Ontario, a regular columnist for the Toronto Sun. On the proponent side: Stanley Cohen, a radical lawyer who has defended Hamas clients accused in U.S. courts, and Mohammed Mahmoud Mohammedou, associate director of a Harvard research program.[...]

As for me, I had decided what I wanted to say a week before, in Baghdad. My group had been touring the American military hospital in the Green Zone when casualties began to arrive from a suicide bombing -- all Iraqis, mostly civilians. The doctors hustled us out the door: They had work to do. But you did not need to see much to take away a lifetime's image of the savage wounds that extremist Islam was carving into the flesh and lives of the people of the Middle East.

With that memory in mind, I pleaded to the Qatari students: The terrorism of Hamas is aimed at Israel. But it will rebound upon you. The ideology of Hamas is the ideology that blew up the mosque in Samarra. It is the ideology that tyrannizes Iran. It is the ideology that triggered the 1994 civil war that killed between 40,000 and 100,000 Algerians.

Hamas lacks the power to destroy Israel. But the people who believe as Hamas believes hold the power to destroy places like Qatar -- as they are now daily destroying Iraq.[...]

In Doha, the motion in favour of Hamas carried 89% to 11%. In Iraq, the motion in favour of Hamas-like terrorism is carrying a whole nation toward the apocalypse.

Is there any need to fear a clash of civilizations when one side seems so determined to self-immolate?