Jewish students are often challenged on campus by their Muslim colleagues about Israel and its policies toward Muslims. I have debated Muslim academicians on the issues and asked them numerous questions. These questions reveal that Islam is not compatible with our culture.

Instead of defending Israel’s positions and actions, Jewish students should challenge the premises of Islam. Muslims who attend our universities or teach in them should be shown that pursing traditional Islamic dogmas without critique makes them antagonists of the culture they are trying to study and understand. They should be made aware that their attacks on Judaism and Zionism expose the flaws of dogmatic Islam, Islamic supposed supremacy and intolerance.

Muslims in Western academic institutions should stop being missionaries of dogmatic Islam if they wish to become part of our non-dogmatic culture. If they come here just to study techniques to destroy Western civilization rather than get integrated into it, they should not be welcome. In brief, Muslims on campus should be put on the defensive instead of being allowed to attack Western values, Jewish students and faculty who do not subscribe to their dogma.

Here are some of the questions I asked:

. • Are you ready to consider the premise that Islam is not superior to all other religions? Do you acknowledge that it is wrong for Muslims to threaten with death a Muslim who converts to another religion or who does not believe, without question, all the basic premises of Islam?

. • Are you ready to consider that Judaism and Christianity had strongly influenced Islam from day one, and should, therefore, not be despised by Muslims? Is not the saying: “Do not spit into a well from which you are drinking” an applicable analogy?

. • Do you agree that it is preposterous to state that Abraham, Moses, King David, Jesus and others, who lived hundreds or thousands of years before the Koran was written, were Muslims? How do you define a Muslim?

. • Are you ready to submit that the Jewish people have a 3000+ year welldocumented history (not just in the Biblical texts)? Do you realize that Jewish history is more than twice as long as the 1400-year-long history of Islam? Moreover, are you ready to submit that the Land of Israel is the ancient homeland of the Jewish people and the cradle of Christianity?

. • Are you ready to submit that it is wrong for Islam to destroy holy places of other religions or covert them into Islamic holy shrines? The destruction of Jewish synagogues in the Gaza Strip is the latest example of such behavior. Judaism and Christianity may have behaved similarly in the past but have openly expressed regret for this behavior and rectified these situations when possible. Are you ready to support similar remedial actions by current Muslims?

. • Are you ready to submit that “Jihad” is a holy war that obligates believing Muslims to kill non-Muslims? Have you not heard about Yassir Arafat’s calling for such atrocious action and the same call by Sheik Yassin, Sheik Nassralla, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, to mention just a few militant Muslim leaders?

. • Do you endorse the teaching of young children in Saudi-Arabian, Pakistani, Afghani, and Palestinian schools, among others, to hate non-Muslims, Jews and Americans in particular, and be ready to die fulfilling the “holy” duty of killing”infidels”? Since Muslims practice this suicidal behavior all over the world, do you agree that this form of holy war is not just rhetorical but quite real?

. • Do you agree that the Qur’an allows Muslims to deceive non-Muslims and not honor treaties with them? In addition to violating practically every treaty he made with Jews, we saw Yassir Arafat telling the Western public that he denounces violence, while directing and celebrating it within his own community. Abu Mazen seems to follow the same duplicitous path when he did not prevent the destruction of the abandoned synagogues in the Gaza territory. Would you be ready to denounce this deceptive behavior addressing other Muslims?

Can you justify murder by Muslims of innocent civilians, Jews, Christians, Hindu, Bahai, Buddhists, Shinto, etc, or even Shiites, or Sufis, just because they are non-Muslims or because they belong to the “wrong” Muslim sect? Can you justify these as “acts of self defense”? If you object to such atrocious acts, what can and will you do to prevent them?

• Do you agree that in order to avoid a bloody conflict between the West and the Islamic world, Islam must undergo a thorough reformation? Do you agree that such a reformation must categorically disallow holy wars called for by Muslim clergy or political leaders? Do you feel the need for a reformation that will give all non-Muslim men and women full civil rights, including unmitigated freedom of worship, in all Islamic countries? Do you agree that this kind of fundamental reformation must be initiated from the inside of the Muslim community and be executed by Muslims? Would you be ready to take an active part in bringing forth such a reformation?

My purpose is not to be confrontational. It is rather hopefully a Socratic approach attempting to encourage intellectual Muslims to think. The majority of Muslims have been lead astray by a militant minority that perverts legitimate Islamic tradition for political ends. This approach has deliberately used Islam to provoke a bloody conflict with the West with no end in sight.

The average Muslim is unlikely to challenge militant Islam because Islam requires conformism. Moreover, the citations from the Qur’an or its early interpretations used by militant Islam as justification of their policies are indisputably genuine. Since Islam requires total conformity upon real threat of death, the ordinary Muslim will never argue with the sacred scriptures.

On the other hand, one expects Muslim intellectuals, who study or teach in our colleges and universities, to be among the first ones to challenge Islamic dogmas. Still, it may take decades or even centuries before a radical reform of Islam will be implemented. This must be a reform that will allow religious tolerance to prevail, ending the clash of civilizations. Otherwise, there is, unfortunately, no end in sight.