The Week

Sending the Iranian students home is an empty threat anyway, since the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Sales of Iranian flags are booming in the United States, flags not for flying but for burning. The burning of other nations’ flags is a routine prelude to war, which cannot get under way until nation can be brought to hate nation. In the hullabaloo a word of pacification yearns to be uttered. 1) Not every Iranian hates every American, nor every American every Iranian. 2) Iranians are not primitives: the Persian legacy in art, science, and political philosophy is a rich vein in the mother lode of Western civilization. 3) Islam shares with Judaism the prophetic tradition of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses; and with Christianity all these and Jesus; the true religious conflict of our time is not amongst believers but between believers and the official atheism of Moscow. 4) More powerful than the transmitters beyond the borders, more powerful than the engineered mobs, is the voice crying in the wilderness.

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Sending the Iranian students home is an empty threat anyway, since the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Sales of Iranian flags are booming in the United States, flags not for flying but for burning. The burning of other nations’ flags is a routine prelude to war, which cannot get under way until nation can be brought to hate nation. In the hullabaloo a word of pacification yearns to be uttered. 1) Not every Iranian hates every American, nor every American every Iranian. 2) Iranians are not primitives: the Persian legacy in art, science, and political philosophy is a rich vein in the mother lode of Western civilization. 3) Islam shares with Judaism the prophetic tradition of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses; and with Christianity all these and Jesus; the true religious conflict of our time is not amongst believers but between believers and the official atheism of Moscow. 4) More powerful than the transmitters beyond the borders, more powerful than the engineered mobs, is the voice crying in the wilderness.