May 9, 2008

Working Toward Cultural Dialogue

To the Editor:

In "How Just Is Islam's Just-War Tradition?" (The Chronicle Review, April 18), Evan R. Goldstein reports an incident that took place at a meeting of American and Arab Muslim intellectuals in Malta in 2005. I had been asked to give some impromptu remarks about just-war theory as a point of departure for discussion, and the Arab reaction was openly hostile, equating just war with holy war and those who use just-war reasoning with jihadists. This was, as Goldstein quotes