Wow...who would ever expect that?

So, I've kind of been following the expanding furor over the repeated publication of anti-Muslim cartoons in several European papers. Personally, while I think both sides are blowing things out of proportion, I do think that the entire idea was pretty much in poor taste and I can see why Muslims are upset. But one article I came across this afternoon stopped me in my tracks for a moment. In the midst of all these quotes from 'the man on the street' in the Middle East, calling for the blood of the people behind the cartoons and their publication, there was a voice of reason calling out from the Muslim world. And it was a voice I would never have expected to hear making this call.

In Iraq, the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, decried the drawings but did not call for protests.

"We strongly denounce and condemn this horrific action," he said in a statement posted on his Web site and dated Tuesday.

Al-Sistani, who wields enormous influence over Iraq's majority Shiites, made no call for protests and suggested that militant Muslims were partly to blame for distorting Islam's image.

He referred to "misguided and oppressive" segments of the Muslim community and said their actions "projected a distorted and dark image of the faith of justice, love and brotherhood."

"Enemies have exploited this ... to spread their poison and revive their old hatreds with new methods and mechanisms," he said.

The man has just shot up about fifty rungs in my estimation. Well, that's not true. He's been steadily climbing. For the last year or so, he's actually been one of the more temperate voices coming from Iraq, especially from outside the flegling government ranks. He has called for peaceful resolutions of internal problems, for temperate approaches to external problems... basically, he's tried to eliminate any excuse the West has for maintaining an occupation in Iraq. It's a brilliant strategy, because it will force Western powers to show their true colors. I'm a skeptic, I doubt the West will ever completely extricate itself from Iraq...but as long as Iraqis are flailing to provide some sense of domestic security, the West has an excuse to keep troops there. Once Iraq makes peace with itself, the rest of the world will have to either get out, or reveal their hypocrisy.

If more voices were raised with this kind of tempered insight, I think there's a glimmer of hope for peace in the Middle East.