This is just the sort of dialogue we've all been hoping for - knowing as
we must that there's no way a religion with 1.2 billion adherents is
entirely
around the bend - and knowing as well, that every person is the hero of their
own narrative. The people blowing themselves up (and taking innocents with them)
aren't seeing themselves as the bad guys.
When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar
announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al
Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned
that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.
Nervous as he faced five
captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was
inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the
gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled
homeland.
"If you can convince us that
your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle,"
Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas,
then you must agree to renounce
violence."
The prisoners
eagerly agreed.
Now, two
years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace
reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are
courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured
Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country,
previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and
Afghanistan.
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
