Do Muslims around the world back Islamic radicalism and terrorism? We've been hearing a positive answer to this question for seven years now from a slew of right-wing pundits who seem to be making a very good living as Muslim-bashers. These pundits are big on anecdotes but small on data. Fortunately we are now in a position to answer them with the facts supplied in John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed's important book Who Speaks for Islam? If you haven't read this book, you cannot consider yourself properly informed on the topic.

Esposito and Mogahed cite Gallup data that shows that only 7 percent of Muslims consider the 9/11 attacks to be justified. The authors don't think that even 7 percent of the world's Muslims are ready to sign up for jihad. Yet any group of Muslims who approves of 9/11 is a group that I think we should worry about. These are the political backers of Bin Laden and his cohorts. Undoubtedly Al Qaeda hopes to recruit from this pool. We should be monitoring this group closely.

But let's at the same time recognize that this cohort is a tiny minority. Images of Palestinian activists celebrating 9/11 or radical Imams leading chants of "Death to America" are not representative of Muslim opinion. There are right-wing pundits who have been trying to foment a clash of civilizations by proclaiming typical Muslims to be radicals, but next time you hear this ask for convincing evidence to back up such allegations. Most likely you will get unrepresentative anecdotes.

The larger concern for Esposito and Mogahed is Muslims who reject terrorism of the 9/11 type but nevertheless hate the United States. This hatred, however, is not mainly derived from American support for Israel or America's alleged imperialist history. Nor is it because, as President Bush once put it, "they hate us for our freedom." Rather, Esposito and Mogahed trace Muslim anti-Americanism to the belief that the West in general, and America in particular, are conducting a "war with Islam." And when Muslims are asked why they think this, they point to three things.

First, they cite America's support for secular Muslim despots. Second, they point the finger at what they view to be anti-religious and immoral values disseminated through American popular culture abroad. Finally, they seize upon the statements of inflammatory Americans who say, as Lawrence Auster recently did, "The problem is not 'radical' Islam but Islam itself, from which it follows that we must seek to weaken and contain Islam." My former colleague at the Hoover Institution, Victor Davis Hanson, seems to share Auster's view.

One wishes that self-styled Islamic experts like Auster (an attorney previously known for his efforts to reduce immigration in America) and Victor Davis Hanson (actually an expert on classical antiquity with excellent books on topics like the Peloponnesian War) would stop trying to launch the United States on a crazy secular crusade to undermine or transform the religious beliefs of Muslims, a group numbering well over a billion people. These pundits' analysis would be greatly improved if they learned to distinguish among Muslims.

No, guys: they don't all look alike and they don't all think alike. There are Islamic radicals who are our sworn enemies, and there are other Muslims who are being alienated from the United States because they want to rule themselves, they want to affirm traditional Islamic values in their countries, and also because they are disgusted with the anti-Muslim sentiments exhibited by people like Auster and Hanson.

Who Speaks for Islam?, written by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, is one of the most important books on the War on Terror. In the seven years since 9/11, we have been subjected to all kinds of ignorant pontification--much of it from the left, but some also from the right--on "why they hate us." This book, written by a leading scholar of Islam and the head of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, brings a wealth of real data to bear on this important subject.

The book is full of fascinating data on Islamic radicalism, on Muslim support for democracy, on the role of women, and on the values of Western popular culture. At first glance the results seem confusing: An overwhelming majority of Muslims rejects 9/11 style terrorism but a significant number of Muslims support the Palestine suicide bombers. Huge majorities of Muslims support democracy but reject the Western understanding of rights and liberty. In fact, a substantial majority of Muslims--including Muslim women--support some form of sharia or Islamic holy law. Most Muslim women want equal rights but even champions of those rights emphatically reject Western-style feminism.

What's going on here? Esposito and Mogahed argue that traditional Muslims, who make up the bulk of Muslims in every Muslim country, strongly identify with the Western principles of rule of law, self-government, and religious toleration. In fact, their main critique of America is that, as they see it, America backs secular dictators in the Muslim world who deny to Muslims the rights that are taken for granted by Americans. Many Muslims who back Hamas do so because they see the group as fighting for Muslim self-rule.

On the other hand, Muslims reject what may be termed 1960s liberalism. They reject the shamelessness and frequent depravity of American popular culture. They reject the type of feminism that relinquishes the home in favor of careers. They are resolutely anti-abortion. They consider homosexual marriage to be an abomination. Rather than import these "alternative lifestyles" into their society, Muslims want to live according to their own traditional values and elect their own governments that will defend Muslim interests.

Esposito and Mogahed shrewdly note that the values of traditional Muslims worldwide are very similar to the values of traditional Jews and Christians in the West. For instance, only around 15 percent of Muslims in Europe consider homosexuality "morally acceptable." That's way below the figures for the general public in Britain, France and Germany. But when conservative and religious Europeans and Americans are polled, it turns out that the percentage of people who are fine with homosexuality is about the same as that of the traditional Muslims.

Yes, I could say that I predicted all this in my book The Enemy at Home. But the great contribution of Esposito and Mogahed is to put a mountain of data behind these conclusions. Over six years their group has conducted tens of thousands of face-to-face surveys of Muslims in more than 35 countries making what they rightly call "the largest, most comprehensive study of contemporary Muslims ever done."

This book is a huge embarassment to conservatives like Victor Davis Hanson who, based on no data and very little familiarity with the Muslim world, have been portraying Muslims as violent theocrats who reject modern science, modern democracy and modern capitalism and spend most of their day performing honor killings and genital mutilations. This portrait of the Muslim world is about as accurate as that of a Muslim who believes that typical Americans live their daily lives according to the values of "Natural Born Killers" and "Brokeback Mountain."

What can we conclude from this book? First, that the values of the cultural left are an important source in alienating Muslims worldwide. Second, that Muslims don't reject modernity or the West: rather, they embrace what may be termed "1950s America" while rejecting the libertine values of the 1960s. Third, America can build alliances with traditional Muslims by showing them the face of traditional America, so that they see that Hollywood values aren't necessarily American values. Finally, left-wing groups like International Planned Parenthod and Amnesty International should stop pushing feminism, gay marriage and libertine values in the Muslim world.

Pundits like Chalmers Johnson love to say that American intervention in Iraq and elsewhere has produced a "blowback" of terrorism from the House of Islam. Wrong! It is in Iraq that America is allowing an elected Muslim government to rule according to Muslim interests and Muslim values. Iraq is the only country in the Middle East where the Muslim population actually chose its own rulers. Iraq is not the problem. Rather, it is the values of the cultural left, and the cultural imperialism that seeks to impose those values on reluctant Muslims, that is the real source of Muslim rage, and the best recruiting tool of the radical Muslims.

Each year, some two million Muslims from around the world make a pilgrimage to the holy site of Mecca. For some in the West, nothing could be scarier than two million Muslims, all dressed in white, touching their heads to the ground and shouting "Allahu Akbar." Reading the usual pundits, you get the idea that Mecca is a breeding ground of Islamic radicalism.

To figure out if this is true, a group of American researchers surveyed more than 1500 Pakistanis who went on the pilgrimage to Mecca in 2006. They discovered that these men had overcome great obstacles to make the trip. It costs arond $2500 to go to Mecca, and that's three times the annual salary of a typical Pakistani. Still, nearly 140,000 Pakistanis applied to go in 2006. Only 80,000 visas were granted by the Saudi government.

Since the Saudis granted their visas based on lottery, the researchers had the clever idea of comparing the attitudes of those who returned from Mecca to those who didn't get to go. They wanted to see if the pilgrimage to Mecca strengthened or undermined Islamic radicalism. Incredibly, the researchers found that the Pakistanis who went to Mecca returned with attitudes more moderate and less sympathetic to Islamic fanaticism and terrorism.

But isn't Mecca dominated by radical clerics who, when they aren't eating or sleeping, lead chants of "Death to America"? This is the propaganda you hear from groups like memri.org that selectively publish material intended to give an exaggerated picture of the influence of the Muslim radicals. In reality, the overriding theme of the visit to Mecca is the traditional theme of universal Muslim brotherhood.

No surprise: pilgrims returning fro Mecca were 25 percent less likely to hold that different tribes or ethnicities could not live in harmony. Remarkably, pilgrims were also more likely to believe that all religions can co-exist. Moreover, the Pakistanis who went to Mecca were less approving of suicide bombings and other such tactics as the Pakistanis who stayed back.

Call this the Mecca effect. I predicted it in my book The Enemy at Home, in which I argued that America can find common ground with traditional believers and not just anti-Muslim activists like Hirsi Ali. The results of the Mecca effet, and the study cited here, are beautifully outlined in a recent article in the online magazine Slate written by Professor Ray Fisman of Columbia University. You can read the article here.

Yes, I know that the Islamophobes will come back with their regularly-recyled quotations from the Koran about "killing all the infidels" and so on. But equally alarming quotations can also be found in the Old Testament. The important thing is to see how those texts have been interpreted and how people have acted upon them. Muslims have had many empires through the centuries: the Ummayad, the Abassid, the Mughal, the Ottoman, and so on. Tens of millions of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have lived under Muslim rule. In any Muslim empire was it either policy or practice to systematically kill all the non-Muslims? No.

So we have to learn to think afresh and to take into account real evidence. Prejudice against practicing Muslims and against religious believers in general is rife in certain segments of Western society. But such prejudices should not be the basis of making public policy.

While on the debating circuit pounding atheists--a pastime I am really getting to enjoy--I have just started reading Dalia Mogahed and Esposito's Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think. It's one of the first books to put some real data behind a much-disputed question. Go ahead and order the book here.

For several years now liberal and conservative pundits have been pontificating about the Muslim world, usually without a shred of data. I was amused last year to cross swords with some of my fellow conservatives like Scott Johnson and Victor Davis Hanson. These ideologues seem of the opinion that the average Muslim is a crazed polygamist who is ready to blow himself up. No surprise: this is supposedly what Muslims all learn in the school where they read nothing but the Koran! Only pundits who have no exposure to Muslim countries, Muslim history and Muslim people can go on like this.

For such gurus, Islam itself is the problem and nothing short of an Islamic Reformation headed by ex-Muslims like Hirsi Ali will show the Muslim world where it has gone wrong over the past five centuries. Forgotten in all this theorizing is the simple fact that Islam has been around for 1300 years and Islamic terrorism has been around for a few decades. The intelligent questions to ask are, what is it about Islam today that has made it an incubator of radicalism and terrorism? And second, what do most Muslims really think about the West?

Fortunately there is an increasing body of reliable data on Muslim beliefs. One source is the World Values Survey, which has the benefit of tracking opinions over a period of decades. Another is the Gallup surveys which are now under the aegis of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a group headed by Mogahed. Esposito is one of the most respected American authorities on Islam. I am only getting into their book, but here I offer my own hypothesis, and then I'm going to find out if their data vindicate it.

The problem for Muslims is not Christianity or Judaism. In fact, Islam sees itself as incorporating both in much the same way that Christianity sees itself as incorporating Judaism. The problem for most Muslims is liberalism. But here we must distinguish betwen two kinds of liberalism. There is the classical liberalism of the American founding. Call this Liberalism 1. This liberalism is reflected in such principles as the right to vote, to assemble freely, to debate issues, to trade with others, religious toleration, and so on.

Then there is the modern liberalism of the 1960s. Call this Liberalism 2. This liberalism is defined by such tenets as the right to blaspheme, the right of teenage boys and girls to receive sex education and contraceptives, the right to abortion, prostitution as a worker's right, pornography as a protected form of expression, gay rights and gay marriage, and so on. It is this second type of liberalism that seems to drive the social agenda of today's Democratic Party. For example, Hillary Clinton chaired a presidential task force during the 1990s that promoted prostitution as an international right for workers.

Now we are in a better position to understand Islamic attitudes regarding the West. The vast majority of Muslims worldwide embrace Liberalism 1 while rejecting Liberalism 2. They are generally comfortable with classical liberalism while abhorring the tenets of modern liberalism. And by equating America with such things as blasphemy, pornography, prostitution and homosexualty, the radical Muslims appeal to ordinary Muslims to join their cause in a battle against the Great Satan. This is what I have argued in my recent work and I'm interested to see how my thesis stands up in light of Mogahed and Esposito's data.

Of course today's liberals will chafe at the idea that their values are producing a powerful "blowback" from the House of Islam. That's why we need good empirical work like this book. Let us find out what Muslims really think, and then let us look at the propaganda of the radical Muslims to see how they rally traditional Muslims to their side. Who cares if liberals don't like to admit what is going on? People are entitled to their own opinions but they are not entitled to their own facts.

In the 1950's, at the height of the Red Scare, people would be asked "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Now, we have the Green Scare where even presidential candidates are asked, "Are you now or have you ever been a Muslim?"

Barack Obama has been asked this question multiple times throughout the campaign (you can see 60 Minutes asking him this question in the video below). For the record, he isn't. He's a good Christian (as opposed to a bad Muslim, I suppose). But what if he was Muslim? Well, that would automatically disqualify him, wouldn't it? The sad thing is that there's no question that it would.

Americans might vote for a woman or a black candidate, but a Muslim is out of the question. Not even close. In fact, it's now considered a smear to call a candidate a Muslim. I don't know if people know this, but Muslim-Americans are just as American as Christian-Americans. I know that seems ridiculous, come on, they're Muslim! But no, if you check the constitution, amazingly enough, all Americans are in fact supposed to be equal.

So, why am I so animated by this? Wait a minute, am I now or have I ever been a Muslim?!

I better answer those charges before you take my opinion on this seriously. What if I'm a closet Muslim trying to infiltrate the United States? You know there are real Muslims who are trying to undermine this country. We have to be careful. They're a threat to our way of life. Just like those communists were ... oh yeah.




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When I proposed in my book The Enemy at Home (newly out in paperback) that America should ally with traditional Muslims to defeat the radical Muslims, some conservatives reacted with amazement. Where, these savants inquired, are the traditional Muslims? Clearly the exposure of some on the right to the Muslim world was limited to the viewing of clips of Bin Laden videos on the Fox News Channel.

Then last October a group of 138 Muslim scholars from diverse schools of thought wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict urging "mutual understanding" between Christianity and Islam. Titled "A Common Word Between Us and You," the letter notes that Muslims and Christians can find shared ground based on the dual commandments to love God and love our neighbor.

"As Muslims," the letter goes, "we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them--so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them, and drive them out of their homes." The letter was carefully worded so that it did not confuse clashes of interests with a war against the Muslim religion. In effect, the Muslim leaders were saying that their religious quarrel is only with atheists and other enemies of Islam.

Liberal Christians reacted to the letter with their usual abasement. Certainly some relief was in order, because Muslims who seek common cause with the West, or at least with the Christian West, are far preferable to those who seek to destroy us. Even so, why are liberal Christians so quick to prostrate themselves? "We want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in the war on terror) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbor...We ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world."

The Vatican, accustomed to dealing with Muslim diplomatic initiatives for centuries, responded with much greater caution. While welcoming the initiative to dialog, the Vatican's Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran stressed that genuine common ground requires reciprocity. So if Muslims want to have full rights of worship in Western countries, they should grant those same rights to Christians in Muslim countries. If Muslims have the freedom to build mosques in London and Chicago, Christians should be able to build churches in Islamabad and Amman.

One group of ignoramuses wants to wage an ideological war against Islam. Another group of sycophants wants to curry favor among Muslims, just so long as they abstain from bombing us. In between these two there is a sensible option: to negotiate respectfully but firmly with traditional Muslims, building on shared values but also insisting that justice and goodwill must come from both sides of the street.

Atheists can break out the champagne: there really are some wacky religious people out there. One of them seems to be Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury. In a recent speech Williams ruffled a lot of feathers--it is not Anglican custom to ruffle a lot of feathers--when he said it "seems unavoidable" that Muslim holy law or sharia is coming to Britain. Not only that, but our bearded, bespectacled cleric even thought that this would be a good thing because it would foster social cohesion.

While conceding that "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country" some of the "extreme punishments" and "attitudes toward women" that prevail in certain Muslim countries, Williams called for a "constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law." So: no chopping off limbs and no honor killings. Williams argued, however, that other issues such as marital disputes and financial matters could be handled not by the British legal system but by Muslim sharia courts. All of this would have the beneficial result, in Williams' view, of meeting the distinctive needs of Muslims. Williams argued that Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty."

Now if this sounds absurd to you, and a little dangerous to boot, ask yourself: where have I heard this before? What we are getting from Williams is not religious craziness but liberal craziness, not theological error but multicultural reductio ad absurdum. The multicultural premise is that classical liberal rules that apply equally to everyone nevertheless discriminate against racial and cultural minorities that don't want to play by those rules. Consequently equality of rights for individuals must give way to equality of consideration for groups. Otherwise minorities will feel disenfranchised even in a society where there is equal treatment for individuals under the law. This is what Williams means when he says that Muslims should not have to sacrifice cultural loyalty in order to be loyal to Britain.

So what is our woolly-headed archbishop suggesting: office breaks for Muslims to pray five times a day? Jihadist history month? Overlooking the occasional polygamous marriage in the Muslim community? No one really knows because Williams didn't really say. And when several people expressed shock at Williams' words and called for his resignation, Williams finally acknowledged that he had spoken "clumsily" and with a "misleading choice of words." Even so, he added that while he did not favor creating "parallel jurisdictions" for sharia and secular courts, he thought that "additional choices" could be opened to Muslims. On what precisely those choices might be, Williams maintained a Sphinx-like silence.

If you're squeamish about harsh language or politically correct about cultural sensitivity, then don't watch what I have to say about the Saudis here:





To get the full context of this conversation, watch our show on The Young Turks website. I am against all religious fundamentalists. When I say we are going to win, I mean secular, freedom loving capitalists. When I say they are going to lose, I mean the fundamentalists of all the religions from the Christian right here to the hypocrites in Saudi Arabia. They all moralize and judge others and then secretly do the worst things themselves because they've bottled up their desires and their true nature. Long live freedom.

One more thing: How moral can you be if morality is forced upon you by the law? Doesn't morality require free choice? If the government has to force you to be moral, then you have no morals at all.

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It appears Muslim fundamentalists just assassinated Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. It is not entirely clear they were responsible however. Not only was there a bombing (usual trademark of fundamentalist attacks), but Bhutto was also shot. So, it could be some other forces in Pakistan who were opposed to the former Prime Minister, including the government of Pervez Musharraf (after the assassination, Bhutto supporters were chanting, "Dog, Musharraf, Dog.").

If it was religious fundamentalists, it wouldn't be the first time. It would be about the one billionth time religious folks have resorted to violence to settle disputes. And they usually kill people trying to bring peace or empower others. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was killed by a Muslim fundamentalist for making peace with Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a Jewish fundamentalist for trying to make peace with the Palestinians. While Christian fundamentalists are busy trying to create the next Armageddon so we can all die. What a pleasant lot.

Why do they do this? Because they're supposed to. Read the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. They are all full of violent, bloody fantasies that teach you over and over to kill your enemies. Christians love to think they are the exception to this rule. They'll say the Old Testament doesn't really apply anymore because the New Testament overruled all the gory, masochists violence of the earlier book. So, then I guess Genesis isn't true either since that's in the Old Testament? Oops.

Then, you'll get the excuse that Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Yeah, I know, that's why in Matthew 10:34 he says, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." Sounds down right Christian of him.

Whenever right-wing politicians start pulling the "this is a Christian nation" stuff on us, I cringe. They're not saying this is a predominantly Christian country; they're saying being American is somehow integrally connected to being a Christian. And that flat out isn't true. Read the constitution.

Did you know that America was the first secular country in the world? We were the first country to say specifically that we are not ruled by any religion. So, when the Christian right try to turn that logic on its head, they are actually being as un-American as you can possibly be.

Whether the right-wing likes it or not, a Muslim American named Mohamed Abdullah is just as American as any Southern Baptist named George Thompson. I know that drives them crazy, but Christians don't own this place. They need to stop treating the rest of us as renters.

What if Muslims ran political ads like Christians do:



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Philosopher Daniel Dennett wants to force all parents, even parents who home-school their offspring, to give up their children to educators like himself. For what purpose? To expose the children, Dennett argues, to "uncontroversial" facts about the world's religions. Listen to Dennett make his case in a short segment from our recent debate in Boston, and then you can hear my answer to him.

In his book on religion, Dennett writes, "How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents? It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in?" Dennett insists that "parents don't literally own their children the way slaveowners once owned slaves, but are, rather, their stewards and guardians, and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere."

During our debate, Dennett asked me what part of his proposal I disagreed with. Well, I agree with him that one of the purposes of education is to expose young people to facts and ideas that they do not get at home. But I disagree with Dennett's presumption that parents are typically the indoctrinators while educators are always the liberators. Notice how derisively and condescendingly he talks about religion. His derision is entirely unsubstantiated by facts. He mocks the Vatican and wonders if it will one day become a museum, and he wonders if Mecca is headed for repossession as "Disney's Magic Kingdom of Allah." Sure enough, a good part of the audience is moved to snickers and laughter. This is bigotry posing as intellectual sophistication. Dennett has taught the undergraduates well: chuckle at anyone who takes religion seriously and this is how you will be considered an enlightened, mature person.

We should turn Dennett's questions on him and apply them to professors: "How much do we regard children as being the property of their teachers? Should secular educators be free to impose their anti-religious beliefs on young people? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? Universities don't literally own undergraduates the way slaveowners once owned slaves but are, rather, their stewards and guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere."

For legislators, alumni and parents, probably the best way to hold universities accountable is through financial leverage. The way I do it is to take on self-satisfied pedants like Dennett and expose them, in front of their own students, as intellectual emperors without clothes. Watch the Dennett debate and you will see how the snickers and applause of the skeptics eventually gives way to a sullen silence. These students are desperately in need of an alternative to the strident secularism of Dennett and his colleagues. True liberation for young people means freedom not only from the ignorant fundamentalism that Dennett rails about, but also freedom from the secular fundamentalism that he and many others in the academy sadly embody.

One of the mantras of the "diversity" movement in America and the West is that all cultures are equal. The basic idea is that each culture is an adaptation to a particular environment. Therefore no culture is inherently preferable to another. The political significance of this is that all cultures are equally deserving of respect. The goal of education becomes one of inculcating in young people a respect for all the cultures of the world. By learning that our own culture is not superior, we also become less racist and bigoted toward other cultures.

This doctrine of cultural equality--or more precisely cultural relativism--sounds good when we are considering the quaint folkways of other cultures.

Last night, in the CNN/You Tube debate, a Muslim-American woman asked the Republican candidates how they would improve the image of America in the Muslim world. This is a critical question because the more hearts and minds we win in the Muslim world, the less terrorists we have to fight.

People who have already become terrorists are a hopeless cause. And a great majority of Muslims in the world will never even come close to engaging in this type of violence. There are over a billion Muslims and only a tiny, tiny fraction have joined extremist groups like Al Qaeda. Most experts believe there are less than 10,000 members of Al Qaeda, but let's say there are ten times that amount -- 100,000 hardened terrorists. That would be .01% of the Muslim population. That means 99.99% of the world's Muslims are not terrorists.

This obvious fact shouldn't even have to be said, but we live in strange times. Anyway, we want to make sure that we don't lose that 99.99%. Because even if it becomes 99.98%, then we would have to fight 200,000 terrorists. That's why it's important to convince Muslims throughout the world that we are not out to get them.

Instead of answering along these lines, the three Republican candidates who answered had an unbelievable response -- they would improve America's image in the world by starting and continuing more wars against Muslims and never apologizing for any of it. Brilliant!

But even more important, they missed what makes America great in the first place. Watch below for their answers and an explanation of why they don't understand the glory of America:

Clip from the Republican Debate

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Lord Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement, would have been surprised! He wanted his Scouts to be troopers for the British empire. Young British boys and girls, learning the techniques of survival and camaraderie and civilized behavior even in stressful conditions.

A British teacher at a high school in Sudan, Gillian Gibbons, 54, was arrested on blasphemy charges for allowing her six- and seven-year-old students to name a class teddy bear "Mohammed," says the Telegraph. She was interrogated for five hours, according to the Daily Mail, and the teacher now may face forty lashes and six months in prison. Protests against Ms. Gibbons, a divorced mother of two, have broken out all over Sudan and the school has been closed through January to prevent retaliation.

On one hand, you want to say Ms. Gibbons should have known to avoid the name, especially given the recent Danish cartoon debacle, which resulted in dozens of deaths. The Koran say, "[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth... [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him." The ban is supposed to prevent idolatry.

But it's hard to make a case the class' teddy bear project, which involved students taking "Mohammed" the bear home and recording his "activities" in a diary, could be construed as deliberately insulting.

Hassan Aberdeen, a researcher at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, quoted in Sky News, says that the anger over this does indeed seem to be disproportionate, even given Sudan's strict Islamic Sharia law. He says, "It seems that the parents made an issue of the teacher calling an animal Mohammed. Calling him a dog or a pig is insulting, but this is just a teddy bear."



And who would think the teddy bear (whose name was voted on by the class; Assan and Abdullah lost to Mohammed) was actually intended as a representation of the prophet? And who would imagine he would turn the students into teddy bear cultists?

It just seems like a logical fallacy to say that calling a teddy bear Mohammed is the same as calling Mohammed a teddy bear. After all, Muslim children are routinely named Mohammed; no one thinks they're being cast as reincarnations of the prophet.

In the case of the Danish cartoons, the image was actually supposed to represent the true Mohammed. Suddenly, by comparison to this, the rage over those little sketches seems imminently reasonable.














(Photo of Gibbons is from her Friends Reunited account via Reuters)