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Tolerance, Inclusivity, and Exclusivity
It appears the world can be divided into two distinct psychological mind-sets.
There are those who seek exclusivity, who seek to draw boundaries between
themselves and others, who wish to see their own beliefs as unique, quite distinct
from what others believe, views in which they themselves are right and the
others wrong. On the other side, there are those whose goal it is to search out
common ground among beliefs, shared points of overlapping inclusivity and
commonality. This happens even among believers in the same faith. As one wise
man put it: “They drew a square and left me out; I drew a circle and included
them.”
But what personal psychological element is it that impels some adherents of a
religion to a search for narrowness and exclusivity, others to seek embrace and
inclusivity? This dichotomy comes up endlessly in discussions in the West about
the relationship with Islam. When I lecture on commonalities within the
Abrahamic faiths, I sometimes encounter objections. I note, for instance, that for
Muslims Allah does not refer to a different God any more than Dios is a
“different” God for Spaniards, Dieu for the French, Bog for Russians, or Tanrı
for the Turks. Indeed, Arab Christians refer in Arabic to their God as Allah.
These are all just different words in different languages for the same concept—
the One God. But a few Western Christians will object: “Allah is not my God.
My God brought forth Jesus as his only begotten Son, the salvation of mankind
and my intercessor. That is not the God of Islam.” In one sense, this is absolutely
true. Some Jews, too, will object that “the Christian God is not my God because
he begat a Son, a concept alien to Judaism. Furthermore, according to the Old
Testament, Jesus clearly is not the Messiah that Christians consider him to be.”
And this is true as well. And some narrow-minded Muslims will describe
Christians and Jews in exclusionary terms as “nonbelievers” in Islam, rather than
as “People of the Book” as stated in the Qur’an.
Perhaps those who feel their own culture and community are threatened will
drift toward drawing sharp borders, toward exclusionary belief in an effort to
protect their cultural heritage under threat. In which case, we are really talking
about elements of personal and social psychology, not theology at all.
We see, then, how Islam is very much of a piece with the evolution of
religious and theological thinking in general and can be located at a midway
point between the theological polarities of Judaism and Christianity. Islam did
not come as a theological shock to the region. But it did serve the interests of
geopolitical powers of the region just as Christianity did. Thus, most of our story

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will involve the interplay of states with religions; at that point the power and
goals of the state dominate any independent role of religion. This reality sets an
important stage for a key argument of this book: that most of the history of the
West’s relations with the Middle East is really about the geopolitics of empires
and states and not much about religion itself—regardless of the slogans, banners,
and ideological fervor invoked at the popular level to support the state. Take
Islam out of the equation, and there’s a very good chance you’d still find the
Middle East at loggerheads with the West.

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CHAPTER TWO