King Abdullah's View: Islam Has a Problem, and Europe isn't Helping

I recently came across a very interesting interview conducted by the folks at the Middle East Quarterly with Jordanian king Abdullah II. (You can find the whole interview here.) I've never been quite sure what to think of the king, although it must be said that a man who can cross cultural lines as he can (and must) do brings a valuable perspective to the overall conflict between Islamism and the West.

One of his responses, though, really stood out (emphasis mine throughout):

MEQ: Do your neighbors have the same approach [with regard to fighting extremism]?

Abdullah: In private, they do. At the time of the Beslan school massacre in Russia, all of us were disgusted. But it's just not good enough to sit in the privacy of one's home and say how awful this is and condemn these people who are defaming Islam. This was a crime against humanity, and we have to be much more vocal, in public. In my view, Islam is going in a direction that's very scary, and as the Hashemite Kingdom, we have a moral obligation to stand up. Yes, there are a lot of other things that are happening inside the Muslim world, but we have to draw the line. If we don't, then these people are going to win.

Even the Saudis have started talking more openly. They were supportive of the conference that we had here in Jordan for Iraq's neighboring states where we issued a clear and unambiguous call against extremism.[1] They were vocal in Amman. They are more vocal in their own country, now. But there are still some in Saudi Arabia who think that the problem of these bin Ladin supporters is a passing threat and that six months from now the extremists won't have a leg to stand on. That's just not the case and to think so is to sugarcoat the problem. It doesn't solve the problem that they have inside the country, nor does it solve the problem that we in the Muslim world have.

I have to say it's very good news indeed if the king's peers were disgusted by Beslan, as any decent person should be. And it's also refreshing to hear a Middle Eastern leader express concern for the general direction of Islam. Also, it should not be forgotten, as the President said in his speech today, a major Iraqi police academy is being run in Jordan with the king's government's help.

Hope, perhaps?

However, even more intersting was this response, which seems to not have excited much comment:

MEQ: The Iranian acquisition of nuclear capability would change the equation. What is the best response to this?

Abdullah: You have to deal with Iran with a united front. When we went to Iran about a year and a half ago, the Iranians were under tremendous pressure. They felt that they had gotten themselves into a very tight corner, and that's why they said, "Please, we want to reach out to the United States; we have our Al-Qaeda prisoners that we want to hand over; we want to talk about weapons of mass destruction; and we want to have some sort of a common understanding on the issue of Iraq, the unity of Iraq." But the minute the Europeans had prime ministers knocking on Iran's door, the Iranians felt the pressure was off. How do you address the nuclear issue now, given the way Europe is, with France's and Germany's relationship with the United States? How do you get a united front to deal with Iran? You need a unified front. But even so, that doesn't mean we should be letting the Iranians off the hook with what they're trying to do in Iraq.

Good going Europe! Thanks for the assist, as usual.