VERY RIGHT OR VERY WRONG, BUT NEVER BORING: And today, Andrew takes one of his (admirably rare) detours into the second camp. Viz:

THE CULTURE OF DEATH: A couple of hundred people are dead because they were a little too enthusiastic about stoning the Devil. This happens every year. Is it culturally insensitive to ask whether there isn't something profoundly awry about a religion that sends so many to their deaths as part of a religious duty? The Hajj minister in Saudi Arabia comments: "All precautions were taken to prevent such an incident, but this is God's will. Caution isn't stronger than fate." Excuse me? God's will to commit hundreds to their deaths? At the same time, Islamist fanatics murder scores by killing themselves in Iraq. What we have on our hands is, in some instances, not that far from a death cult.

Rather than parse or critique the argumentative structure of the paragraph (though I don't quite believe that the concluding smear against Islam generaliter follows at all from the premises, however incontrovertibly true, that the Saudi religious authorities are awfully negligent in permitting Hajj trampling deaths to recur with such tragic frequency, and that religiously-motivated terrorists do pose quite grave challenges to the security and peace of the newly free Iraqis), what I'd prefer to do is to point out one hopeful note which this analysis misses. And that is the bluntness, conciseness, and eloquence with which on the night of Eid al-Adha, Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al Sheik, the Saudi Grand Mufti and by no means a liberal, denounced terrorism. Noting that the extraordinary majority of victims of the recent terror attacks in Iraq and Turkey have been Muslim, and equally attacking terror against non-Muslims, the Mufti asked in his address to the pilgrims whether "is it holy war to shed Muslim blood? Is it holy war to shed the blood of non-Muslims given sanctuary in Muslim lands? Is it holy war to destroy the possessions of Muslims?" (For reporting of his speech, see Chicago Tribune and LA Times.) And to miss the significance of this condemnation - in favor of instead using a human tragedy aggravated by the incompetence of a tyrannical regime to make a smear against the extraordinarily variegated and broad Islamic swath of the planet - seems to me regrettable.

I'd like to note, though, that I'm criticizing Andrew here precisely because of the high moral tone of his life's work, and because of the great esteem in which I hold his contribution to the political discourse of the two countries of which I am resident. His quite sensible combination of social progressivism, fiscal moderation, and idealistic hawkishness in foreign policy represents a far too rare triumph in our day of humanistic common sense over the partisan and ideological consistencies that are so in fashion for our thoughtless age. With lesser sorts, I do not quibble.

UPDATE: A bit more on this from one of our esteemed friends.