The Foreign Service Journal, November 2011

There may be hope. But as our distinguished late ambassador to Saudi Arabia, WilliamPorter, used to say, “Hope is a good companion, but a poor guide. ” As fellow monothe- ists, as admirers of Islam’s contribu- tions to civilization, we may hope that Islam will not let itself be trapped in an obscurantist cul-de- sac. History, however, is unsparingly Darwinian toward societies disfavored by natural selection. History serves up winners and losers. Where now is classical civilization? In our cultural genes, in our museums. Byzantium? It sur- vives as a truncated, disputatious fraction of “that which once was great.” The tempo of the modern world is accelerating. It is harder and harder for non-performing societies to keep up, much less catch up. And imagine the violence, the pain, the awful grinding, if Islamic civilization, half-brother to the West, were to be drawn into history’s rock crusher! As friends of Islam, we can stand watch by the bedside ... and hope and pray. How The West Can Help But there are a few other things we could do. I’d propose first, that when speaking or writing in English, we all stop using “Allah” when we mean “God.” A reader or listener might conclude that the God of Muslims is horrific, a Moloch, or something drawn fromAztec mythology. If we can’t agree that we worship the same God, and that He listens equally to all our prayers — the prayers of Jews, Christians, and Muslims —we’ll never agree on the smaller issues ... such as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Second, the United States, with its never-equaled polit- ical and economic and military might, should peremptorily U.S. - I S L A M R E L A T I O N S N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41 So how should a young Arab Muslim today answer the great question, “How then should I live?”