So you want a holy way?

Whatever is or is not authentic transcription of Islamic dogma, we do know that the people who ran the airliners into the World Trade Center believed that a Koranic voice was telling them to do what they did. We have the four-page document that told them not only what to do, but what to think. "Kill them, as God said; no Prophet can have prisoners of war."

They would not cavil, their clerical dispatcher knew, but even so there was a reiteration of the sacredness of their mission. "Recognize ... what God has prepared for believers in endless happiness for martyrs. ... Be steadfast and remember (that in) God you will be triumphant."

Here is a strategic suggestion from the Western high command. Declare in full voice that Islam is widely profaned and mistaught. That if it isn't -- if the Koranic high exegetes are paralyzed with doubt whether such as the Ladenites are true to their faith -- then the faith being practiced must be disavowed by the legitimists. Say as much, and say also that the Western world is prepared to denominate the imposters as such and to call for a restoration of a Muslim religion consistent with civilized conduct.

We have done such a thing in the political world. Without using the language of excommunication as such, what we got around to doing in the postwar world was to exclude communism as an acceptable model for the organization of political life. We did this because, by our experience with communism in practice and by the exercise of reason, we judged it incompatible with irreversible advances in human behavior.

When finally the United States abolished slavery, the word went out: No more. No Christianity cum slavery. One or the other.

We have now Islam to deal with. We do not need to make the point that its political and economic record is miserable, that only one of 18 Muslim states (Turkey) is democratically governed. There are those who are willing to advertise the individual hypocrisies. A spokesman from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, while calling on his faithful to overthrow the government of Pakistan for the sin of maintaining equable relations with the United States, sends his own two sons to the United States to school. The Taliban has taken unmarried women detected in pregnancy and buried them to neck level before execution. Where is Islamic condemnation of such practices? For that matter, where is condemnation of Saudis chopping pickpockets' hands off?