The Diplomatic Strategy against Israel Joel Gilbert

President Bush’s diplomatic mission to the Middle East for “peace in 2008” highlights the huge gap in understanding of the Islamic world on every level in the West, from the man on the street, to Jewish and Christian religious leaders, to our elected officials. Only by gaining an appreciation of Islam's world view, through its theology and historic trials, can Israel and the West begin to deal with the real issues and challenges.

From the inception of Islam, the Christian West has had difficulty understanding Islam as a different religious phenomenon than Christianity. When Muslims conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th Century, Christians referred to Muslims arriving from North Africa as “Moors.” Over the centuries, Spaniards continued to refer to Muslims as Moors, even if they were from India or Indonesia. Throughout the rest of Europe, Muslims were referred to as “Turks,” after the group of central Asian nomadic invaders who converted to Islam and governed the Islamic Empire in the Middle Ages. In Asia Minor, Christians referred to Muslims as “Tartars,” an ethnic name.

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