Dr Gunter Mulack, recently appointed by the German government as the Commissioner for Dialogue with the Islamic World, was in Karachi recently, where he delivered a talk to explain his mission. He said that it had come as a shock to Germans that most of the perpetrators of the events of 9/11 had lived and worked in their country, which fact along with some other incidents elsewhere had forced them to want to know "what went wrong and where?" Besides, he said, they also needed to comprehend as to why all of a sudden so much misunderstanding had arisen between the two civilisations.
His government has created a new corps of Islamic experts to start a dialogue with the Muslim world to resolve the contentious issues. It is a very creditable effort on the part of Germany, though many on the other side of the so-called civilizational divide would also want to know as to where is the mystery about Muslim anger.
From their perspective, there is no 'suddenness' to what has been happening, and surely there should be no 'misunderstanding' as to its cause.
Lamentable as the present conflict between the Western world, led by the born-again Christian and crusader, US President George W. Bush, and radical Islamists is, it has nothing to do with religion. It is a fight for political rights. It is another matter though that oppressive and corrupt regimes in the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East, which are backed by the US, have sidelined the progressive-liberal classes, leaving the field wide open for extremists.
Angered by the political injustices and humiliation meted out to their fellow Muslims, these people are willing to kill and get killed. What do they want? It is no secret that they have been demanding, for a long time, that the US stop backing the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, and its support of the repressive Arab regimes.
It should not shock anyone if the Islamists seek a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in accordance with UN resolutions, especially resolutions 242 and 338 that urge the Zionist state to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories and pull back to its 1967 borders.
Osama bin-Laden, a former American protégé, who was taught and trained to fight against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, has been trying to apply that same lesson to his own country, starting his anti-West 'Jihad' with the demand that the US pull out its troops from Saudi Arabia.
Of course, neither of these demands are religion-related. It also needs to be noted that the Islamists do not target all Western governments, but only the ones which lend unthinking support to Israel in its bloody suppression of the Palestinian rights.
In other words, they are not fighting the Christian world in general, but only the governments that side with the oppressors of the Muslim peoples. Their methods, such as the attacks on the Trade Center in New York, and a train in Spain, and earlier bombings in two African countries, are certainly abominable.
Since the main target are the Western backers of the Zionist state, and Zionists happen to dominate the Western media - almost completely in the US - they have tried, unfortunately successfully, to greatly mislead the American public and to a lesser extent the Europeans.
In fact, Dr Mulack himself acknowledged this reality in a rather vague way when he spoke of both the Muslim and Western media in the same vein. He correctly observed that the picture the media presented was 'deceptive' 'and misleading,' adding that in the Muslim world there was a feeling that Islam is under attack while in Europe Islam was seen as a threat.
Islam may not be under a direct attack - though the US media, both print and electronic, allows considerable space and time to evangelical crusaders, who describe Islam as evil and the difference between Christianity and Islam like the one between "light and darkness" - but Muslims certainly are targeted.
From Afghanistan to Iraq and Palestine, and from Kashmir to Chechnya, they are under attack. Bush's men have killed uncounted thousands in Afghanistan, and about 100,000 innocent civilians in Iraq.
His protégé, Ariel Sharon has murdered nearly three thousand Palestinians in targeted assassinations as well as mindless bombings during the last three years of Intefada. And yet the Western media routinely call the Palestinians who, in their defence, resort to the weapon of the weak, suicide bombings, as terrorists while maintaining silence over the US and Israel's indiscriminate mass killing of Muslims.
Hence, much appreciable as the German attempt is to understand what is the cause of conflict, Berlin would do itself and the rest of the world a great service if it allows itself to grasp the obvious and help the Muslim peoples achieve their just political rights.