Jinn of Current Events

September 2002, 7-part NPR series on the Israeli-Arab conflict. An attempt to bring context and perspective... understand the complex situation... document the deep and conflicting roots... [and] give both Palestinian and Israeli historians an opportunity to explain how they see it differently. 

This is a key insight into the Arab/Muslim mind and their modern frustration. Gerecht: For a thousand years Islamic civilization was triumphant, and that is what you would expect if in fact Mohammed was the last of the prophets and Islam the last of the revealed religions. So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to them that for the past 300 years they've been consistently losing on the battlefield. It is illogical. It is depressing. The mythology of Islam is and will remain self-defeating, unless they manage to annihilate the free world. 

Bernard Lewis: In the classical Islamic view... the world and all mankind are divided into two: the House of Islam, where the Muslim law and faith prevail, and the rest, known as the House of Unbelief or the House of War, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam by conversion or death. 

Jerusalem Post: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was directly involved in ensuring that sums reaching $15 million were transferred to families of suicide bombers and wounded Palestinians in the territories. The transactions were carried out with the full knowledge of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. At this point, James Taranto would remind the reader that Master Terrorist Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. At this point, I would also remind the reader that another famous political "chairman" in history was Master Murderer Mao Tse-Tung. What is the infatuation of murderers with this term? 

Bernard Lewis: By all standards of the modern world--economic development, literacy, scientific achievement--Muslim civilization, once a mighty enterprise, has fallen low. Many in the Middle East blame a variety of outside forces. But underlying much of the Muslim world's travail may be a simple lack of freedom. Only after the question evolves to "how do we fix it?" will new dynamics lead to solutions, rather than blame.