Patience in Iraq

Paul Johnson has some words of counsel for those who are dealing with Iraq. Indeed, he has one word in particular: Patience.

Nowhere is patience more needed than in the Middle East. Many tend to look at that area as a hopeless and confused muddle, producing nothing but bloodshed, and they blame President Bush for igniting the conflagration. Yet, in fact, long-term patterns of change are discernible there, but patience is needed to allow them to develop.

The Western occupation of Iraq has had two consequences--one intentional, the other less so. It transferred the location of Muslim extremist violence from Western cities such as New York and London to the Muslim heartland of the Arab world. But the violence in Iraq has had the unforeseen consequence of resurrecting, in acute form, the smoldering violence between the two chief branches of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia.

I've speculated, on occasion, that Islam may be going through a phase, rather the way Christianity did only a few centuries ago.

It is worth remembering that the Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants that devastated central Europe in the mid-17th century was followed by a similar revulsion and the beginning of what later became known as the Age of Reason. Christian religious sects largely abandoned mutual violence, and a new tolerance and rationality took over. This in turn made possible the scientific and industrial revolutions and the spread of Western affluence.

Moderate Muslims have long bewailed the fact that Islam has largely missed the opportunities to grow rich and powerful that were so eagerly seized upon by the West. The chance for the long-delayed Muslim revolution of reason and tolerance, which will finally bring the billion followers of Muhammed into the modern world, is at hand. The situation in the Middle East may at present look confused and threatening, but forces are at work that promise hope and long-term stability. What we need now is patience.