They're reluctantly shifting their ground

摘要

Shortly before the war in Iraq, al-Az-har University, Cairo's 1,000-year-old citadel of Sunni Muslim orthodoxy, issued a fatwa declaring jihad against the invaders. Senior clerics from as far away as India and Russia endorsed the call. Six months later, most Muslims still bitterly resent America's armed intrusion into the heartland of Islam. Yet, while some go so far as to applaud attacks on the occupying force, more have quietly begun to accommodate themselves to the new reality. This change of heart owes little to American diplomacy. The widespread Muslim suspicion remains that Iraq is only part of a wider American plan to subvert the faith. The appointment―to a senior post in America's anti-terror team―of a general quoted as slurring Islam, along with the American administration's apparent approval of an Israeli airstrike earlier this month against Syria, has reinforced such fears.