Killing the Messenger.(Review)

Children of Abraham, 2 vols.: An Introduction to Islam for Jews, by Khalid Duran, with Abdelwahab Hechiche (American Jewish Committee and Ktav, 326 pp., $19.95), and An Introduction to Judaism for Muslims, by Reuven Firestone (320 pp., $19.95)

Early in June, Khalid Duran, a shy, sensitive 61-year-old man living in Bethesda, Md., was threatened with death by a Jordanian Muslim cleric. According to Sheikh Abd-al-Mun'im Abu Zant, Duran had offended Muslims by writing a book seeking to introduce the essentials of Islamic faith to American Jewish readers. The book, along with a companion volume written by a rabbi to introduce Judaism to Muslims, had been published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Abu Zant was echoing a U.S. group called the Council on American- Islamic Relations, which had assailed Duran's book and the AJC for "stereotyping" Muslims; but the group's stated objections to the book were perfunctory and flimsy. CAIR made the egregiously un-American demand that the manuscript be submitted-before publication-to a group of Muslim experts of the group's own choosing, and echoed Abu Zant's assertion that Duran's blood could rightfully "be shed."

CAIR is a leading advocate for Islamic fundamentalism in America today, its claimed objective to prevent "stereotyping and inaccuracy" in the depiction of Muslims. Its real aim, however, is not to protect American Muslims from harmful prejudice but to prevent moderates like Duran from conducting an open religious dialogue with American Christians and Jews. The reason is simple: such a dialogue would reveal to the American public the important truth that the great majority of the world's more than one billion Muslims do not support fundamentalist extremism.

To most sensible Americans, this AJC-inspired project would appear at first glance to be simply another example of bien-pensant, "progressive" Jewish liberalism seeking "peace through understanding." American Jews, and non-Jewish conservatives, have every reason to distrust such well-meaning but misguided undertakings. Nevertheless, the reaction Duran's book has provoked should make us pay attention to his message, since it reveals the depth of the fracture within the Islamic world. In fact the threat against Duran was just a single incident in the long-running war between Muslim extremists and Muslim moderates-a war that reaches from Chechnya to Maryland, and back in time a thousand years.

It is extremely difficult to imagine that the AJC provided funds for this project with the objective of making life difficult for Muslims anywhere. Both volumes are fairly elementary; Duran's could be described as a fast tour of the Islamic intellect, and Rabbi Reuven Firestone's introduction to Judaism is an equally basic description of Jewish observance. Neither conveys the depth or significance, each for the other, of the global contributions made by Jewish and Islamic thought. Though their idiom is straightforward and uncomplicated, these volumes seem not to have been intended for a mass audience-more for school, synagogue, and (one should fantasize) mosque libraries. Neither author can be seriously reproached for misrepresenting his faith. Both are clearly eager to lessen the fear that Jews and Muslims now feel toward each other-and each ...