Thank you. How Israel came into being etc. is just a small part of the bigger jigsaw. The bigger picture is that there needs to be a sweeping rethink by the Muslim world in order to manage an image makeover amongst the rest of the world. Media management is an important cog, but would lack credibility without a perceptible change in the way the Muslim world re-integrates with the bigger world - both the Christian one as well as the others. And there are hardly any real neutrals here, that is very obvious.
So here is where the very pertinent exchange between you and Vinod on the issue of "open wounds" comes in. And there lies the real big difference between senior statesman world religion of Christianity and the bad boy maverick religion of Islam in the way the world at large sees them. let me explain.
Islam is now an old world religion that is unfortunately not yet matured or grown up. In many pockets of the world even today, it behaves as a brand new infant religion that is in peril, that needs constant re-affirmation and protection, that needs to be actively spread at the risk of dying out, and that is always at war with and suspicious of other faiths and their followers. A religion that is close to a millenia and a half old needs to come across very differently. But it does not. A here lies the reason for the open wounds.
It is in the nature of all wounds to heal with time. For closure one way or the other. Either the wound heals or it suppurates and leads finally to loss of limb or life. Both Christianity and Islam have over centuries inflicted serious wounds upon the world. Upon the lands and people they have conquered in their relentless march towards propagation and consolidation. But over time Christianity has changed. At least on the outside, in its overt missionary zeal, in the larger give and take with other religions and people. The Church has learned to live alongside other houses of faith that it once ravaged and pillaged and destroyed.
Islam has not learned to do so.
Even today, in the modern world where people have moved on as you put it, Islam has not. That is why there is a degree of intolerance and separatism linked with the people and political leadership and clergy of Muslim countries, that is not seen overtly in Christian dominated ones. Hence "the other" world, non-muslim and non-christian, have learned to be more comfortable and accepted and integrated into mainstream Christian dominated society than Muslim. Hence where the wounds inflicted by champions of the cross have slowly healed and the past forgiven, such is not the case for the warriors of the crescent.
The world's perception of Islam will not change by the change in behavior and outlook in pockets of liberated no-radical Islam. Instead, Islam will be judged by its behavior where it is the majority faith with unbridled power, and un-enforceable social responsibility. That is the need of the hour. Everything else will follow.
