beyond the mountains

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Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on the sensitive issue of rapport between Islam and the West: He said that violence, embodied in the Muslim idea of jihad, or holy war, is contrary to reason and God's plan, while the West was so beholden to reason that Islam could not understand it. Nonetheless, in a complex treatise delivered Tuesday at the university here where he once taught, he suggested reason as a common ground for a "genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today." In all, the speech seemed to reflect the Vatican's struggle over how to confront Islam and terrorism, as the 79- year-old pope pursues what is often considered a more provocative, hard- nosed and skeptical approach to Islam than his predecessor, John Paul II. As such, it distilled many of Benedict's longstanding concerns, about the crisis of faith among Christians and about Islam and its relationship to violence. And he used language open to interpretations that could inflame

By Sa'ad Al Deen Ebrahim, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service_ US President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be quite right about a new Middle East being born. In fact, their policies in support of the actions of their closest regional ally, Israel, have helped midwife the newborn. But it will not be exactly the baby they have longed for. What is happening in the broader Middle East and North Africa can be seen as a boomerang effect that has been playing out slowly since the horrific events of September 11, 2001. In the immediate aftermath of those attacks, there was worldwide sympathy for the US and support for its declared "war on terrorism", including the invasion of Afghanistan. Then the cynical exploitation of this universal goodwill by so-called neoconservatives to advance hegemonic designs was confirmed by the war in Iraq. The Bush administration's dishonest statements about "weapons of mass destruction" diminished wh