The latest Pew Global Attitudes survey contains the following good news:

The percentage of Muslims saying that suicide bombing is justified in the defense of Islam has declined dramatically over the past five years in five of eight countries where trends are available. In Lebanon, for example, just 34% of Muslims say suicide bombings in the defense of Islam are often or sometimes justified; in 2002, 74% expressed this view.

Today, two terrorists blew themselves up amid a crowd of soccer fans whose only crime was cheering Iraq's recent victory over South Korea in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is it any wonder why support for suicide bombing is dropping so rapidly in the Muslim world?

Copies of a strange, enormous, beautiful book arrived unsolicited at Foreign Policy magazine and its publisher, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, last month. The Atlas of Creation uses 759 heavy, glossy pages to illustrate its author's view that the scientific theory of evolution is just plain wrong. The thick, 11-by-15-inch tome, with hologram-like images on its cover, was written by a mysterious Turkish man, Harun Yahya (whose real name is Adnan Oktar). Nearly every page features brilliant color photos of fossils and animals, all which supposedly prove that creationism is correct, and evolution is balderdash.

On page after page, the same formulaic argument appears, which is typified by this quote from a page with a photo of a 150-million-year-old shrimp fossil:

Since shrimp first came into existence, they have always displayed all the same organs and characteristics as they have today and have undergone no changes in all that time. This shrimp fossil shows plainly that evolution is an imaginary scenario. (p. 110)

The book has been mailed unsolicited—at undoubtedly ludicrously high postage costs—to scientists, academics, members of Congress, museums, and now apparently think tanks across the United States. Copies have also turned up in France.

If Yahya wants to do something positive for the world that also promotes Islam as a religion of genuine peace, he might want to mail Muslims and non-Muslims alike copies of his more promisingly titled books (listed at the end of the Atlas of Creation), including Only Love Can Defeat Terrorism and Islam Denounces Terrorism, or direct people to some of his websites such as Islam Denounces Antisemitism and Islam Denounces Terrorism.

You know, when I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi. That's what I see -- how do you like that? -- a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children. Don't give me this crap that they're doing it out of a sacred ritual or rite. It's not required by the Quran that a woman walk around in a seventh-century drape. She's doing it to spit in your face. She's saying, "You white moron, you, I'm going to kill you if I can."

Those are the words of Michael Savage, a U.S. talk-show host whose radio program, Savage Nation, reaches some 8 million listeners each week. He said them last Monday on the air.

I'm no fan of the "burqa," or niqab as the full Islamic veil known in Arabic. But there's a difference between respectful criticism and hate-mongering. Obviously, Savage crossed the line. And naturally, his words are getting picked up overseas. Here's Egypt's al-Masry al-Youm ("The Egyptian Today"), an independent daily in Cairo:

US 'Arab American News' newspaper said that US hard-line radio stations are some of the main platforms to attack Muslims in the US. It also affirmed that US Muslims are almost every day exposed to racial discrimination in radio programs, most of which are presented by intransigent conservatives.

To prove that Muslims are targeted in US radios, the newspaper, which is the Arab community's mouthpiece in the US, reported the dialogue in which US hard-line presenter, Michael Savage, whose program is the third most-listened-to in the US, while talking about the last attacks in Britain, described a woman wearing the 'Burqa' (Complete Veil) as a 'hateful Nazi' who wants to kill Americans and their children.

Readers of Passport will be able to place Savage in his proper context. He's a buffoon, a performance artist who says shocking things to get attention. But read about him for the first time in al-Masry al-Youm, and you might think he is a mainstream, influential figure. And that is a very dangerous impression for the United States to be sending.

HENNING KAISER/AFP/Getty Images

Recently, I wrote about how some people in Switzerland want to ban the building of minarets. Now a right-wing citizens' group in the German city of Cologne is protesting the construction of what will be the country's largest mosque. The group, Pro Cologne, has even enlisted help from far-right activists in Belgium and Austria.

The protest is driven by a fear of the Islamization of Europe. This anxiety, which Philip Jenkins argues is overblown in a recent web exclusive for FP, is a variant of what one sociologist has described as "cultural displacement" — "the fear that your children will grow up in a world different than the one you grew up in." In the United States, it's captured by those white Americans who, in the face of a rising Hispanic population, worry about a day when Spanish will be the language on the streets and there will be more Miguels than Michaels. In Europe, it's captured by a woman in Cologne who says she wants to feel at home, not as if she's in a foreign land.

The issue of the mosque, which will have space for 2,000 worshipers, started receiving national attention in Germany after Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Ralph Giordano said, "There is no fundamental right to the construction of a large mosque." Pro Cologne has tried recruiting Giordano to its cause, but he has said the group is the "local variety of Nazism."

With Europe's low birthrates and growing immigrant population, it won't at all be surprising to see far-right groups gain in popularity. When a people feel that they and their culture are essentially "going extinct" and being displaced by another group, expect extreme reactions. Already, Germany's population has been decreasing, and wolves (pdf) are even reclaiming sparsely populated areas. With the rise of the far right, let's hope that Germany doesn't end up going the way it did in 1933.

Quick, before you read down to the next paragraphs, guess what was the #2 most popular name for baby boys in Britain last year?

Was it perhaps Harry, Hugo, Jack, or Joshua?

Actually, it was Mohammed, if all 14 spellings are taken into account. (The top spelling, Mohammed, comes in at #23.)

It's a sign of our times, and predictably, commentators are already freaking out about Eurabia. Keep in mind, though, that the list of top baby boy names probably makes it look like there are more Muslims in Britain than there really are since Mohammed is so hugely popular of a name among the tiny 3 percent of the British population that is Muslim.

Nevertheless, the ethnic shift in the popularity of baby names isn't new. A 2005 New York Times article reported that Mohammed (when all spellings were considered) was more popular than Richard and Charles in New York City. Additionally, over the years, Fatoumata had become more popular than Lisa; Aaliyah had sped ahead of Melissa; and Miguel had surpassed Jeffrey. Interestingly, in 1920, Francesco, Antonio, and Giuseppe were top 20 baby boy names in New York City, reflecting immigration from southern Italy.

These changes may make some people feel uncomfortable. But the reality is that change is simply part of the human condition. Hanging onto the past is futile. Shift happens.

I call it ‘hadith slinging,’ ” said Prof. Khaled Abou el Fadl, a specialist in Islamic law at the University of California, Los Angeles. “I throw a couple of hadiths at you, and you throw a couple of hadiths at me, and that is the way we do Islamic law,” he added. “It’s like any moron can do that.”

That's from an interesting article in today's New York Times about the search for U.S.-born Islamic prayer leaders, known as imams. Apparently, there's a huge shortage of qualified imams in the United States who can speak to the real concerns of young American Muslims.

Some people think that bombing and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians are sometimes justified while others think that this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that such attacks are often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?

In December of last year, a sample of Americans was asked this question in a poll by the Program on International Public Attitudes, and their responses were:

• often- 5%
• sometimes- 19%
• rarely- 27%
• never- 46%
• The remainder said "don't know" or refused to respond.

Recently, a survey by the Pew Research Center (pdf) asked Muslim Americans: 

Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified? 

The responses were:

• often or sometimes- 8% (15% for those ages 18-29)
• rarely- 5% (11% for those ages 18-29)
• never- 78% (69% for those ages 18-29)
• The remainder said "don't know."

Any statistician will tell you that you have to be cautious in comparing the results of two separate polls, but at the very least, the results above show that when it comes to intentionally attacking civilians, Muslim Americans don't support it any more than Americans at large do.

In my blog post yesterday, I said it was "unsettling" that "one in four young U.S. Muslims surveyed agreed that suicide bombing of civilians was at times acceptable." Well, now I also find it unsettling that 51 percent of my fellow Americans think it's acceptable to intentionally attack civilians. It's not too surprising, however. Many Americans think that dropping nuclear bombs on Japanese civilians during World War II was acceptable, so it makes sense that a sizable fraction think—at least on certain occasions—that bombing civilians is justifiable. Troubling indeed.

Earlier this week I blogged about "Tomorrow's Pioneers," a shocking children's show on Hamas' al-Aqsa TV station in which a Mickey Mouse clone named "Butterfly" teaches Palestinian youngsters how to be good Hamas members. At the time, it seemed that Hamas had agreed to pull the show off the air following a global cry of disgust and pressure from the more pragmatic Fatah and independent factions of the Palestinian Authority.

That information was wrong; Hamas rejected the PA's intervention and ran the show as normal today. In explaining his decision, al-Aqsa station manager Hazem al-Sharawi said:

We have an educational and entertainment message. It carries knowledge, a sense of humor and morality. There is no shame in this, and we will not go back on it."

Jamie Rose/Getty Images News

Edward Luttwak literally wrote the book on strategy. So when he talks about war and peace, people listen. As Blake notes in the "Must Read" column to your right, Luttwak argues in the May issue of Britain's Prospect magazine that, oil aside, the Middle East is a backward and irrelevant place. So why not just leave the losers who live there to their own devices? Below are some of Luttwak's money quotes.

On the Arab-Israeli conflict:

Strategically, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been almost irrelevant since the end of the cold war.... Yes, it would be nice if Israelis and Palestinians could settle their differences, but it would do little or nothing to calm the other conflicts in the middle east from Algeria to Iraq, or to stop Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan ....

On Iran:

[T]he Mussolini syndrome [that got us into Iraq] is at work over Iran. All the symptoms are present, including tabulated lists of Iran's warships, despite the fact that most are over 30 years old; of combat aircraft, many of which (F-4s, Mirages, F-5s, F-14s) have not flown in years for lack of spare parts; and of divisions and brigades that are so only in name. There are awed descriptions of the Pasdaran revolutionary guards, inevitably described as "elite," who do indeed strut around as if they have won many a war, but who have actually fought only one--against Iraq, which they lost. As for Iran's claim to have defeated Israel by Hizbullah proxy in last year's affray, the publicity was excellent but the substance went the other way ....

On the Middle East generally:

We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts--excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all.

There's little doubt that what's been happening in East Asia, in India, and in many of the post-Soviet countries over the last decade is much more profound and important than anything that's happened in the Middle East—with one little caveat. The Middle East seems to produce terrorists. Even if the West withdrew from the region and left it to its own devices, there's no reason to believe this trend would stop. As long as countries like Saudi Arabia breed guys who feel it necessary to murder large numbers of U.S. civilians, the United States will have to take a strategic interest in the region.

The United States may be even further from winning "hearts and minds" of people in many parts of the Islamic world than originally thought. According to the results of a new survey undertaken between December 2006 and February 2007 by WorldPublicOpinion.org and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), the vast majority of people surveyed in four Muslim countries believe that the United States probably seeks to "weaken and divide the Islamic World." An extensive number of people were surveyed in Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco and Pakistan, and at least 73 percent in all of these countries—including a shocking 92 percent in Egypt, a country with a Coptic Christian minority estimated to be in the high single digits—were convinced that this is a primary U.S. goal. Further, an average of 64 percent  believed that the United States also aims to "spread Christianity in the region."

While the substantial majority of people surveyed (the lowest in Morocco at 57 percent, and the highest in Indonesia at 84 percent) believe that attacks on civilians to achieve political goals are not justified at all, around half, on average, do favor attacks on US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the Persian Gulf. In fact, very strong majorities in all the countries involved in the survey support the goal of getting the United States to withdraw its forces from Islamic countries (ranging from 64 percent in Indonesia to 92 percent in Egypt). And on average, 70 percent or higher approve of al Qaeda's principal goals. Yet despite this, only 3 in 10 respondents view Osama bin Laden positively, and large majorities believe such groups as al Qaeda are "violating the principles of Islam," though Pakistani sentiment is ambiguous on this question.

The results resoundingly show that the United States has failed in its public diplomacy efforts. But they also indicate that the majority of people surveyed in these Muslim countries are opposed to violence against civilians and the terrorist tactics of al Qaeda. Three quarters also had favorable feelings about globalization, and overall 67 percent agreed that "a democratic political system" is a good method of governing their countries. So perhaps it's not too late for the United States to overhaul its image and convince Muslims that it's not just out to undermine Islam.

When she was 14 years old, Irshad Manji, a Canadian Muslim, asked her madrasa teacher, "Where is the evidence of the 'Jewish conspiracy' against Islam?"

Her teacher responded by kicking her out of the madrasa.

Since then, Manji has been using her own brain to study Islam and launch a campaign to reform her religion. Manji, who moved to Canada as a child when Idi Amin expelled the East Indian community from Uganda, has written the book The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith. Her latest endeavor is the documentary Faith Without Fear, which debuts tonight in the United States on PBS as part of the channel's series America at a Crossroads.

In 2003, the New York Times described Manji as Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare. She reads the Koran and abstains from pork and alcohol. She's also a lesbian feminist who admires Israel and supports the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

I'm intrigued by Manji's current Project Ijtihad (pronounced "ij-tee-had"). On her website, Manji says that ijtihad is Islam's long-lost tradition of independent thinking that was stomped out at the end of the 11th century. Manji wants to create a network of reform-minded Muslims who engage in critical thinking and bring about a reformation of Islam that updates it for the 21st century. If Christianity could have its Protestant Reformation, it seems possible for Islam to have one too.

Manji has her critics on both the left and the right. She also has supporters ranging from Arianna Huffington to Glenn Beck. I plan to make my own assessment tonight when I watch Faith Without Fear. I encourage you to watch the documentary too.

FARZANA WAHIDY/AFP

Remember in the aftermath of 9/11 when it seemed like every U.S. media outlet was asking plaintively "Why do they hate us?"—where "they" meant Muslims? The question prompted a media search for allies in an Islamic world that seemed universally hostile. But who were these sympathetic faces?

A new study out today from the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda has the answer. The study is titled The 'Good' Muslims: US Newspaper Coverage of Pakistan and one of its surprising findings is that the "good" Muslims are women.

ICMPA's newest study analyzes news coverage of Pakistan by 13 major U.S newspapers during two time periods: September 11, 2001 to December 31, 2002 and January 1, 2006 to January 15, 2007.

It is common in mainstream media's coverage of international affairs for entire countries (and even regions) to be tarred with a wide brush. Much of the reporting on the Palestinians and the Iranians falls into this category. But in other situations, especially when reporters are stationed on the ground and there is ongoing interest in a region, the politics and the peoples are not represented so monolithically. In those situations—coverage of the Balkans is a case in point—often one distinct group is identified as holding the moral high ground. Sometimes that group is represented as the victims of another group (often true, but not always as blamelessly as represented). Sometimes that group is identified as potential "saviors" in the situation—i.e. if only that group held the reins of power the situation would be ameliorated, at the very least. (Read the rest after the jump)

Last Thursday, Passport explained why the U.N. Human Rights Council is now officially a joke. But that was a day before the council passed a decidedly unfunny resolution that condemns "defamation of religion." It was sponsored—surprise, surprise—by Pakistan, on behalf of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The resolution decries defamation of religion in general, but Islam is the only religion it mentions explicitly. The resolution also states that freedom of expression "should be exercised with responsibility and may therefore be subject to limitations as provided by law."

That's rich. Some of the OIC's members—Saudi Arabia comes to mind—are some of the world's worst offenders when it comes to anti-Semitic hate speech. Will they be cracking down when their own citizens defame Jews? Additionally, anti-blasphemy laws have been abused in Pakistan to settle property and business disputes.

It's no surprise that authoritarian countries like China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia would be eager to establish the precedent, even in a laughingstock of a forum like the U.N. Human Rights Council, that "defamation" should be prohibited by law. But what are democracies like the Philippines, South Africa, and Mexico doing voting in favor?

Illustration by Edel Rodriguez for FP

In honor (is that the right word?) of the fourth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, we'll be blogging this week about our cover package, Who Wins in Iraq? For those of you who haven't read it, it's a fascinating set of stories about the top ten winners of a war that, at least so far, hasn't turned out very well for either the United States or the Iraqis.

Story number one, Vali Nasr's take on Iran's triumph in Iraq, tells a tale that many Iraq analysts got wrong early on.

I remember reading an otherwise prophetic article by Jon Lee Anderson, "Dreaming of Baghdad: What Regime Change Means to the Iraqi Shia Opposition," which came out in the February 10, 2003 edition of the New Yorker. It's no longer online, so I'll have to quote from the print version: 

Iranian and Arab Muslims have a very distinct sense of identity, which contradicts the long standing American assumption that Iraqi Shias would probably ally themselves with Iran in a post-Saddam scenario .... In Tehran, I had spoken with Davoud Hermidas Bavand, a political analyst who worked in the Iranian mission to the U.N. under the Shah, and who now teaches political science and international law. "The Iraqi Shias' dedication and devotion to Arabism is much stronger than to Shiism," he said. "If a Shia were to take power in Iraq, there would be a honeymoon with Iran, but this would soon end."

This analysis was echoed in dozens of other outlets, and similar thinking led the Bush administration to believe that the new Iraq wouldn't become an Iranian playground. But as Nasr notes, the particular groups that emerged to become players in the new Iraq had deep ties to Iran. Some of them, such as the Badr Brigades affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, actually fought on Iran's side in the past. Others, such as Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, maintained good ties with Iran in order to survive. So it wasn't enough to point to the "Arabness" of Iraq's Shiites in general, because the specific groups and individuals running the show were predisposed to be friendly with the neighbors to the east.

The honeymoon may yet end. Iraqi's Shiites might someday decide that their true friends are not the devious Persians, but the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, many of whom are trying to blow them up at the moment. For now, though, Shiite Iran is in the driver's seat and riding high.