Muhammed i National Review

National Review har, over to omgange, spurgt en hel række prominente debattører og kommentatorer, herunder Daniel Pipes og Mustafa Akyol, hvordan de anskuer Mohammed affæren, og som er interessant læsning, idet mange forskellige perspektiver og holdninger bliver bragt til torvs.

Første runde var overvejende pragmatisk, også fra Daniel Pipes’ side. I anden runde blev der gået mere til stålet af især Andrew C. McCarthy og Robert Spencer.

National Review’s egen holdning, som vel ligger tæt op ad min egen, gøres klar i en leder hvor det bl.a. lyder:

Muslim fanatics — those who aspire to be dictators, and those who already are —
have ginned up the controversy in order to gain power, or to keep it. They play
to the dull acquiescence of too many ordinary Muslims. But by no means all
Muslims are implicated in this shameful episode. Grand Ayatollah Sistani, leader
of Iraq's Shiites, "denounce[d] and condemn[ed]" the cartoons, but also blasted
"misguided and oppressive" Muslims who have "exploited" the issue "to spread
their poison and revive their old hatreds with new methods and mechanisms." When
President Bush declared, in his State of the Union address, that "liberty is the
future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope
of all humanity," it was Sistani and millions of Muslims, in Iraq and elsewhere,
who agree with him, that he had in mind. The game for Muslim opinion is a tough
one. But it will surely be lost if we forfeit.