CAN WE ALL GET ALONG?

Considerable alarm has been raised in recent days about the dangers from the Muslim Brotherhood's influence over Egypt in the wake of the current revolution. For example, in his book "Jihad Is The Way," the former leader of the Brotherhood, Mustafa Mashhur explains the organization's goals of establishing an Islamic state, world domination under Islam and the public and personal religious duty of military jihad.

The Islamic Brotherhood’s rhetoric mirrors that of fundamentalist/evangelical Christians, does it not? (“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Ann Coulter) This desire to see the world united under the banner of a common faith seems to be embedded in Christian and Muslim DNA, explaining why the two faiths have been at each other’s throats for the better part of 13 centuries.

Before we go off on a tear about the Muslim Brotherhood, we'd do well to reflect on the fact that Islam has as much, if not more, reason to be alarmed by the re-emergence of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. — particularly since one of their number ascended to the presidency of and invaded not one but two Muslim countries acting on eschatological instructions from above. So far, Islam has not resorted to comparable provocation.

Judaism, for its part, while not a proselytizing religion, has nonetheless, contributed to interfaith hostility by twice occupying the Levant (yeah, yeah, God promised it to the Jews, I know), once during biblical times and again in 1948 et seq., followed by ethnic cleansing, and all manner of subsequent barbarisms -- think white phosphorus in Gaza -- in response to provocations by former residents understandably discomfited by their displacement.

Give the history of antagonism between the three faiths, I submit that reversing the escalating algorithm of provocation and retaliation to arrive at a modus vivendi trumps all other concerns in the world today, since failure to do so could well result in irreversible escalation to all-out war and annihilation.

So before we behold the mote in the eye of Islam, I suggest we consider the beam in our own eye.