From The Wall Street Journal's symposium on "Moderate Islam":

A History of Tolerance

By Bernard Lewis

A form of moderation has been a central part of Islam from the very beginning. True, Muslims are nowhere commanded to love their neighbors, as in the Old Testament, still less their enemies, as in the New Testament. But they are commanded to accept diversity, and this commandment was usually obeyed. The Prophet Muhammad's statement that "difference within my community is part of God's mercy" expressed one of Islam's central ideas, and it is enshrined both in law and usage from the earliest times.

This principle created a level of tolerance among Muslims and coexistence between Muslims and others that was unknown in Christendom until after the triumph of secularism. Diversity was legitimate and accepted. Different juristic schools coexisted, often with significant divergences.

Sectarian differences arose, and sometimes led to conflicts, but these were minor compared with the ferocious wars and persecutions of Christendom. Some events that were commonplace in medieval Europe- like the massacre and expulsion of Jews-were almost unknown in the Muslim world. That is, until modern times.

Occasionally more radical, more violent versions of Islam arose, but their impact was mostly limited. They did not become really important until the modern period when, thanks to a combination of circumstances, such versions of Islamic teachings obtained a massive following among both governments and peoples.

From the start, Muslims have always had a strong sense of their identity and history. Thanks to modern communication, they have become painfully aware of their present state. Some speak of defeat, some of failure. It is the latter who offer the best hope for change.

For the moment, there does not seem to be much prospect of a moderate Islam in the Muslim world. This is partly because in the prevailing atmosphere the expression of moderate ideas can be dangerous-even life-threatening. Radical groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban, the likes of which in earlier times were at most minor and marginal, have acquired a powerful and even a dominant position.

But for Muslims who seek it, the roots are there, both in the theory and practice of their faith and in their early sacred history.

Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).

It is too bad that K. S. Lal, Georges Vajda, the opinion-changing-late-in-life S. D. Goitein, Eliyahu Ashtor, St. Clair Tisdall, Joseph Schacht, C. Snouck Hurgronje, and dozens of other far greater scholars than Lewis, who of late has not worn well,  are not around to take issue.

In particular, think of Islam in India, and the Hindu, Buddhist, and other vicitms of Islamic "tolerance" running into the tens of millions.

Think of the Jews and Christians who once peopled the Middle East and North Africa, or of the Zoroastrians of Persia, and ask where they all are? Ubi sunt, given the fact of Islamic "tolerance" as limned by Lewis? 

When I wrote here previously on Lewis, some of the commenters who posted upbraided me for the harshness, as they saw it, of my tone.

I wasn't harsh enough. I didn't keep after him. There was much more I could have said then, or could have said in articles subseuqently, but I kept hoping that Bernard Lewis would not be as Ibn Warraq warned he was.

I see that I was wrong. Once again, I was too trustiong and too forgiving. It happens to me a lot.