How is this not a damning indict of the very possibility of Muslim moderation:
Pakistan’s government will eventually have to recognize Israel, but it would be political suicide to do so today, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday. Such recognition would end any hopes of Pakistan serving as bridge between the Muslim world and the West, Musharraf said. Musharraf, who addressed the U.N. General Assembly last week and is promoting his new autobiography, said his considerable skills at walking a tightrope would not enable him to negotiate the firestorm that recognizing Israel would cause, particularly after its recent attacks on Lebanon.
Follow the logic here for a little bit (not too far – general warning about aneurysms apply): according to Musharraf, Pakistan can serve as a useful advocate in the task of bridging the Muslim world and the West. But Pakistan can only be useful if it rejects the right of Israel – which is, last we checked, a Western state – to exist. Which seems, when you think about it, like a poor way to start off bridging the Muslim world and the West. One of two things is true:
(1) Musharraf is just lying, which we actually don’t really think is what’s going on.
(2) What he meant was “the rest of the West” – mostly Europe – which seems willing to (a) accept Pakistani mediation under these terms and (b) embrace a virulently anti-Semitic and in many cases openly genocidal Muslim world.
Say what you will about him, Musharraf is not stupid. He’s not exactly on the side of civilization all of the time, but he’s not stupid. And we don’t even think he was being intentionally vague or duplicitous here – he just assumed that everybody knows that when diplomats and statespeople say “the West”, Israel doesn’t count.
