6. Western policies towards the Muslim world suffer from a shocking ignorance of even the simplest facts.

Only few people in the West know that there are 30 churches in Teheran and that Christian children receive instruction in their own religion. There are also 15 synagogues in the Iranian capital and about 4,000 Jewish children go to Jewish schools. There are kosher butchers, kosher restaurants and a Jewish hospital, to which the notorious troublemaker Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently donated some money.

The 25,000 Jews have a constitutional right to a representative in parliament, similar to the Christians. In 1979, shortly after the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini even issued a fatwa decreeing that Jews were to be protected. His words are painted on the walls of many Iranian synagogues: "We respect religious minorities. They are part of our people. Islam does not sanction their oppression."

Relations between Jews and Persians have been good since ancient times. It was the Persian king Cyrus the Great who in 538 B.C. freed the Jews from their Babylonian captivity. The Bible calls him a "shepherd loved and anointed by God."

It is true that as protected minorities, Jews and Christians in Iran do not enjoy the same political rights and duties as do Muslims. But do we really grant the Muslims the same rights as Christians and Jews in their everyday lives in Europe? Does Israel really grant its Arab fellow-citizens the same rights in daily life as its Jewish citizens?

Ahmadinejad has indeed made vicious "anti-Zionist", anti-Israeli statements, which on top of that were falsely translated in the West.. However, his aggressive stance, which is rich in political folly and poor in historical understanding, finds little support among the Iranian people and has even earned him the rebuke of Iran's spiritual leadership. This anti-Zionism, however, is not to be equated with hatred of the Jews or anti-Semitism. Orthodox Jews, such as the Hasidic Satmar community, also reject an Israeli state "before the advent of the Messiah" and thus also represent an "anti-Zionist" position.

In Iran and other Muslim states there has never been real anti-Semitism or persecution of the Jews by the state, as was the case in Europe. During the Nazi era many European Jews fled to freedom via Iran. The Jews in Iran are respected citizens. As Ciamak Morsathegh, the Jewish director of the Jewish hospital in Tehran, put it: "Anti-Semitism is not an Islamic, but an European phenomenon."

That is no excuse for Ahmadinejad's provocations. By making lots of noise on the foreign-policy front, he is seeking to divert attention from his policy failures at home. In February 2007, the conservative Iranian newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami rightly complained of his "repulsive tone" that "unnecessarily gives the international community an impression of hostility" and called on him to stay away from "rabble-rousing and sloganeering."

And those of the mullahs, who are responsible for Iran's repressive system, are also extremely unpopular among Iran's young people. They see these repressive mullahs as relicts of the past and they consider their repressiveness an annoying hindrance to progress. The revolutionary religious fervor of the late '70s and early '80s has long since been extinguished.

For eight years before Ahmadinejad came to power, Iran had a cosmopolitan reformist head of government, Mohammad Khatami. He stood for democracy, human rights, and the enhancement of women's rights. But much to the annoyance of the U.S. government he was independent-minded and not its puppet. The United States never gave him a chance. Khatami's lack of success in foreign policy and at home was one of the main reasons why so many pro-reform middle-class Iranians did not vote in 2005 - which led to Ahmadinejad's surprise election victory.

The West itself contributed to the rise of this rowdy demagogue. Nonetheless, Iran, with its great and ancient civilization and its charming and distinguished people, deserves a more cosmopolitan and tolerant government that respects human rights. But is that not true of many a Western country as well?

Western ignorance of the Muslim world is also evident in much more banal issues than the Iran conflict - for example, in the view, widely held in Europe, that the Muslim headscarf is a "symbol of the oppression of women." On this issue the United States is much more tolerant. The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that the intolerance evident in banning headscarves "is un-American, and is morally despicable."

The German weekly Die Zeit jokingly commented on the crusade to free Europe of the headscarf: "If you ask five Muslim women why they wear a headscarf, you will get five different answers: One covers her head for God; another because the scarf goes well with her fashionable H&M clothes; the third will reveal herself to be an ardent feminist; the fourth cites traditions in her village; while the fifth is defying her ultra-secular mother, who has forbidden her to wear a headscarf."

Of course, forcing anyone to wear a headscarf is unacceptable. But is not forcing anyone to take it off just as unacceptable?

The debates about forced marriage, female circumcision, or honor killing are also conducted with a shocking degree of ignorance. There is nothing in the Qur'an or the Hadeeth of Muhammad about these completely unacceptable misogynist practices. They derive from a pre-Islamic patriarchal and heathen era.

Some of these practices are several thousand years old - the gruesome "pharaonic" circumcision of women, for example. This brutal mutilation is not only practiced in Muslim countries such as Egypt and Sudan, but also in predominantly Christian countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya. The victims are Muslims, Christians, Jewish Falashas, as well as members of other religions.

So-called honor killings unfortunately also occur among Christians - for example, in such Christian countries as Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. Most Muslim (and Christian) governments rightly take legal measures to counter these deplorable pre-Islamic and un-Islamic customs and crimes.

In some Muslim countries the advancement of women has gone much further in certain respects than in the West. In Egypt, 30 percent of all professors are women, in Germany the figure is only 15 percent. In Iran well over 60 percent of students are women, which has prompted the introduction of a 30 percent quota for men. There is also a longer tradition of female heads of government in Muslim countries than in the West.

Nonetheless, a lot still needs to be done if women are to attain full and equal rights in all Muslim countries, particularly in our partner countries Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, but also in Iran. However, that is not a problem with Islam. It is a political problem and one that has to do with antiquated patriarchal social structures.

The fact that in the Western countries, public and private shelters for battered women are bursting at the seams shows that even in the presumed modern societies of the West violence against women is a grievous social problem that has not yet been resolved.

We should mind our own business and examine ourselves more closely: Until 1957 a German man had the legal "right of directive" to decide whether his wife may go to work. Until 1970 the men of Switzerland refused to give women the right to vote - after all, both the Old and the New Testament demand the submission of woman to the will of man (see Genesis 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 14:34f.).

Whoever wants to see an end to hatred and intolerance should above all overcome his own ignorance. Everybody has the right to his own opinions, but definitely not to his own facts. What is to prevent us from traveling to Syria or Iran to form our own opinions on that alien and purportedly so dangerous world? The streets of Damascus and Tehran are much safer than the streets of New York or Detroit.

According to United Nations statistics, in 2006 the homicide rate in the United States was 5.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. In Iran the rate was 2.93 and in Syria 1.4. Most Muslim countries are safer than the United States, even safer than Switzerland, where the rate is 2.94 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Why don't we start intercultural dialog in our own personal environment? Why not expand student exchange programs between Muslim and Christian countries - or even with Israel? Why not get to know some works of wonderful Arabic literature or read the famous Ring Parable in Nathan the Wise by the great German writer of the Enlightenment era Gotthold Ephraim Lessing? There, a father (God) bequeathes to each of the three sons he loves equally (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) an identical ring. One ring is the original; it has the ability to render its owner pleasant in the eyes of God and mankind. The other two are replicas.

The brothers call on a judge to establish which of them has the original. The judge, with the wisdom of Solomon, explains that the bearer of the authentic ring is he who earns the love of his fellow men.

For German chancellor Angela Merkel, the most beautiful passage in the play is when the Muslim Saladin calls out to the Jew Nathan "be my friend!". Could we not all learn from this ancient Sephardic Jewish parable and its dream of a peaceful competition among the religions?

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