Here’s what a NEWSWEEK editor said:

The United States must help Islam enter the modern world. It sounds like an impossible challenge, and it certainly is not one we would have chosen. But America–indeed the whole world–faces a dire security threat that will not be resolved unless we can stop the political, economic and cultural collapse that lies at the roots of Arab rage. During the cold war the West employed myriad ideological strategies to discredit the appeal of communism, make democracy seem attractive and promote open societies. We will have to do something on that scale to win this cultural struggle.

We don’t think that “helping Islam to enter the modern world” includes making false accusations of desecrating the Koran, which is a capital offense in several Islamic countries. We think a decent step away from medievalism and towards the modern world, which Fareed Zakaria suggested as good strategy in the War on Terror, would be doing away with that particular capital offense. But spreading false rumors — in a part of the world all too ready to believe them — is no help in that effort.

Zakaria, a Muslim, as well as editor of NEWSWEEK International, was accorded high acclaim for the 7000 word essay excerpted above, which he wrote just after 9-11. It’s a pity his fellow editors and reporters weren’t paying attention. We contacted NEWSWEEK to ask for Mr. Zakaria’s comments on this very serious situation. So far we’ve heard nothing; the only Zakaria story we could find on the magazine’s website was about North Korea nukes. We have previously praised work by Mr. Zakaria, and look forward to his commentary on this most recent Old Media disgrace.

A look at Roger Kimball’s piece will give you a good precis of “disgrace.”

UPDATE

We recommend this column by the Last Angry Woman for your consideration.

UPDATE II

Maybe this is meant to be fence-mending (HT: LGF):

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 at 4:27 pm and is filed under General, MSM, New Media, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.