"Two simple words: Get Tough."

So says the (IMO) greatest living historian of Islam, Bernard Lewis, in a wide-ranging must-read dialog with journalists. Charles Krauthammer elicited from him the quote in the title of this post, in response to his question about what to do in Iraq, Iran, and against Hamas/Hezbollah.

It was an enlightening forum and I was particularly struck by Lewis' analogy of Wahhabism occupying the same legitimacy within Islam as the Ku Klux Klan does in Christianity. I think "Islam/Islamdom" is a useful approach to those cultures. And I am saddened at the wisdom in his observations about Islam's "bloody perimeter".