Words on the War

“Americans should not be deceived by talk that the Gulf War is a confrontation between Islam and the West. Those who portray it as such want us to believe that no political solution is possible, justifying the use of any amount of force by the West. That Islam is the ‘religion of the sword’ is a common Western stereotype, as if believers simply read the Koran and immediately seek battle. The most powerful ideology operating in the Middle East is secular nationalism, and we should be concerned about the more extreme forms it may take under the pressure of large-scale foreign military intervention.”

--CARL W. ERNST, associate professor of religion and Islamic specialist at Pomona College