The leaders of six Western nations whose inhabitants have, at least in the distant past, experienced the redemptive insights of the Enlightenment, with its insistence that reason should play a foundational role in human thought and that an idea like Condorcet's “perpetual peace and progress” might be more than a pleasant alliteration, finally grew weary of the interminable train of vitriolic videos out of the insane mind of Aman Al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian pediatrician turned child killer, and decided to rebut the distasteful propaganda with a salvo of their own righteousness.



The leaders gathered in a video production house in New York. Here are highlights, as recorded:

Jacques Chirac, who was allowed to take the lead, in honor of the French role in the Enlightenment, pleaded with Muslims to convert. Chirac maintained some vagueness about just what he was inviting Muslims to convert to but finally managed to state that they should “convert to the ways of the modern world, by which I mean peaceful coexistence. And while you are considering changing your ways, I want to recommend that you convert from falafel to French pastry.”

Next, Tony Blair took the mike and, in his usually affable and self-effacing way, said, “While I would never propose that Muslims become devout adherents of the Church of England or, for that matter, any Christian denomination, I do want to say that you should allow some room for the fact that, since Christians are quite willing to grant you your more warlike religion, we do expect in return some toleration of our own. In other words, let's make a deal. You stop trying to kill Christians and what you consider other nonbelievers, and we'll refrain from informing you in no uncertain terms that religious war does tend to become a two-way street.”

Then George Bush spoke, saying, “Now, see here. We don't go around killing Muslims. We respect your religion, even though you've got some questionable passages in your holy book. But it's getting harder for us to grant that respect, because killing people in the name of Allah just gives Allah a black eye. Now, I want you radical Muslims to think about this: if there is only one God and his name is Allah, then he made me and Crawford, Texas, as much as he made you and the wilds of Waziristan. So there's no way he wants you to kill Americans.”

Also on hand was a guest speaker, a Muslim cleric who was introduced as liberal. According to the video, he was located after an extensive worldwide search. He spoke, as expected, commendably. “I finally took out some time to do an infidel thing; I read The Bible. And I can tell you there's a lot of stuff in it, too, about slaying your adversaries. So I think if the Jews and Christians have forgiven and forgotten that part of their holy book, we should forgive and forget that part of ours. After all, God apparently usually declines to write down things himself. He trusts human beings to take dictation. And you know as well as I do that humans are imperfect scribes, especially when God appears at night and the tent is dark. Maybe, in fact, we ought to delete that stuff from our holy book. Then when we claim that our religion is better, we might at least be talking about a book that's better when it comes to slaying other people. Hey, think about that. The way we can really distinguish our religion is to refrain in word and deed from slaying other people.”

The video is scheduled for release on al-Jazeera Television as soon as it can be hand-delivered across the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and past various land obstacles.