A small group of Muslim clerics is suggesting that the Islamic world and the "Christian" world have survival as a common need. The suggestion is that Islamites and Christians should attempt to live together in amity. It seems that 138 Muslim clerics originally signed the document and 163 subsequently have endorsed it.

The Doser makes several initial observations:

If the imams are as numerous as preachers are in the US, the number of signers is the equivalent of the church leadership of a population area less than the size of Portland, Oregon. Thus, to achieve agreement to this message from only this number of imams in a year and a half indicates lack of something: knowledge of the initiative, or, possibly, support for it.

The world of Islam is united in one organized religious network that has had no counterpart in the Western World since the collapse of the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church. Within what is left of "Christianity," there is virtually no cooperation toward a common goal as is assumed to be possible by this initiative.

Though it may be true that the cultural enterprise of the Western World is farther along the road toward "civilization," it has not been very long since Christianity was acting in the same sort of bloody-minded ways that Islam seems to be doing now. Consequently, that should be no deterrent to a positive response from us.

A large part of the most vocal of our clerics believe that it is necessary to bring the Islamites to their way of thinking and they have little room for accommodation. People on both sides of the Western/Islam aisle "relish conflict," as the initiative describes it. It's likely that the most earnest religionists on both sides are going to be the least easy to reconcile to any amity.

The paper points out: "The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake." That's a telling point, the Doser says. Maybe we should look around and see if there is some societal component that has the clout among as the Christian Church once did.