LONDON -- "I love death more than you love life," said Osama bin Laden in a recent interview, clearly convinced that this gave him moral superiority over the whole of Western civilization. There are plenty of young men in the refugee camps that litter the Muslim world who would make the same assertion. It creates the impression among non-Muslims that Islam is a very different faith, and perhaps a very dangerous one.
Then there is the response of Muslim leaders to the hideous events of Sept. 11. Many individual Muslims are revolted by what was done in their name by the Arab suicide-hijackers who slaughtered over 3,500 Americans, but there have been remarkably few unequivocal condemnations of their motives and tactics by Islamic religious authorities.
At last month's emergency summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Qatar, not one of the 56 heads of state and foreign ministers actually managed to speak the words "bin Laden" or "Taliban." They formally condemned the attacks on the United States, but not for a moment did anyone acknowledge that the Arab and Muslim identity of the attackers needs to be addressed.