MAKING NICE WITH MUSLIMS : There are certain problems.

Many months before September 11, I had a call from a Muslim who had seen my name in Peter Steinfels's New York Times "Beliefs" column. I had been quoted in the piece along with an imam, and the caller from Brooklyn thought we might be able to start some sort of Christian/Muslim dialogue. I invited him to visit me at church in Queens; he came with a couple of friends. All were African American, all were dressed in traditional Islamic dress. We had a pleasant conversation, agreed that most Americans know little or nothing about Islam, and they left me with a book, hoping I would find it enlightening. I said I would be in touch.

Let me pause here. There are people who say that the problem with the form of terrorism we face is not Islam. Islam is a religion of peace, distorted by the ugly use that bin Laden and company make of it, no more like real Islam than Jim Jones or David Koresh were like real Christianity.

No doubt the Islam of many Muslims--especially those who have lived in pluralistic democracies--is a religion of peace and tolerance. But it is disturbing to hear of young American Muslims who sincerely believe that Israel was behind the attack on the World Trade Center, or who repeat the rumors about preattack phone calls to Jews who worked there, telling them to stay home on the day of the attack.

And then there is the book I was given. Titled Quranic Psychiatry and published in Lahore (where the Brooklyn-based group's leader seems to be headquartered), it makes the interesting claim that no practicing Muslim has ever suffered from mental illness. This is merely silly, but the book contains some really disturbing passages: "Since scientists (most of whom were Jews) hated the church, in blind fury, they revolted against all its basic beliefs..."; "Among materialists, a few particular individuals have played havoc with man, his faith, and morality. They are Feuerbach, Freud, Darwin, Marx, and Lenin--all Jews who privately had different beliefs than what they 'scientifically' propagated..."; "Whatever Freud gave to the Western world was based on his own childhood experiences, perverted Jewish habits, and his use of cocaine and other drugs..."; "However, one is delighted to see a great change in many young psychiatrists who have turned their face away from Jewish fraud..."

Jews aren't the only villains. Here are the Christians: "Their [the "materialists'"] attitude is not very different from their predecessors, the priesthood which upheld the divinity of man, rather than of Allah. Both persecuted mankind on account of their blind faith in unscientific and irrational dogmas. The priests did it for fifteen centuries, murdering millions of innocent patients suffering from hysteria, seizures, and other mental maladies. According to the Gospels, the priests were supposed to heal patients in the name of Jesus, son of Mary. Ironically, these very 'viceroys' of Allah could not save their own converts from these very maladies which they claimed to heal." Also: "Christians should believe and practice the Ten Commandments and give special attention to the injunction, 'Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is One.' They should get rid of that piece of wood and reject the interpolations injected into the belief by Saul, the Zionist."

In addition to blaming the Jewish-controlled media and medicine for suppressing the successes of Islamic psychiatry, the book accuses the Wahhabis (the version of Islam favored by bin Laden and the Saudis) of having "nothing to do with the Holy Qur'an."

The fact that this sort of thing is apparently read and believed by some American Muslims is disturbing, but it doesn't mean that they are out to destroy anyone, any more than the anti-Catholicism of Jack Chick (the man who publishes weird little anti-everybody fundamentalist comic books) means that he wants to hurt Catholics, Orthodox, Jews, and the other unsaved people he ridicules. It does, however, go some way toward clearing the ground for violence, even when violence is not encouraged explicitly. Is this typically Muslim? In some places (Egypt), it is at the very least not untypical. The Egyptian media are full of anti-Semitic rot, and the Saudis have sanctioned the publication of the czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

What does the Qur'an say? I have to say that I am incapable of reading the Qur'an (or rather a translation; because the Qur'an is the word of God it cannot be translated, according to Muslims, and still be really the Qur'an) from "inside," the way I can read the Bible. The Bible contains bloody passages and justification for murderous acts, but I know that this is not Judaism or Christianity. Similarly, many Muslims have been quick to say that nothing in the Qur'an can be used to justify the murder of innocent civilians. It is often said by Muslims that there is respect in traditional Islam for the People of the Book--that is, Jews and Christians. But it is easy to see how a fundamentalist could see some justification in the Qur'an for hatred, when reading lines like this, a reference to those who have befriended Jews, in chapter 58: "Do you see those who have befriended a people with whom Allah is angry? They belong neither to you nor to them...Allah has prepared for them a grievous scourge. Evil indeed is that which they have done." And here is a description of those People of the Book who have not embraced Islam, from chapter 98: "The unbelievers among the People of the Book and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures" (from The Koran, translated by N. J. Dawood, Penguin, 1968).

I called the Muslim who had visited me and told him that he could hardly expect understanding from people he regarded this way. On second thought, he may in fact be understood, all too well. I do not claim that these passages from the Qur'an, or the nonsense in the other book, are in any way representative of Islam as a whole. But no one can, or ever could, speak for Islam as a whole. And when a particularly violent form of Islam becomes a vehicle for the frustrations, hatreds, and grievances of millions of poor people--in societies which deny them economic justice, serious education, the opportunity for critical thought, and freedom of the press--the religious aspect of this war takes on a particularly ominous aspect, and it does, unfortunately, have a lot to do with Islam.