Millions of Canadians, Americans, Britons, Italians, Spaniards and others marched against the unjust war on Iraq. Almost the whole world has since come around to the (Muslim) point of view that the invasion was not only illegal and immoral but that the occupation has been criminally incompetent, even racist, given the official indifference to the scale of the destruction and death. The four Western leaders who went to war in Iraq against the wishes of their peoples, Tony Blair of Britain, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain and John Howard of Australia, have been defeated or forced out of office, principally because of that decision.

In the US, a majority of Americans now view Iraq as the worst American foreign policy disaster since the Vietnam War, perhaps worse, given its domino effect worldwide, including increased terrorism. The Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress and George W. Bush became a lame-duck president.

In Canada, public opinion has turned against the Canadian military involvement in Afghanistan, even while a majority of Canadians want to help Afghans in development and nation-building. Other NATO members have refused to commit enough additional troops, especially in the war zone in southern Afghanistan. It’s not that they don’t oppose the Taliban but they have concluded that the overly militaristic American approach has got NATO forces bogged down the way the Soviets were during their unsuccessful 1980-88 occupation.

Europeans are also having second thoughts about cultural warfare against Muslims. In a major policy shift, several EU members are making serious efforts to reach out to their Muslims minorities. In Holland, a think tank, the Scientific Council for Government Policy, released a pioneering report in April 2006 chastising the Dutch for being ignorant of their 1 million Muslim fellow-citizens and the broader Muslim world.5 Jan Schoonenboom, its principal author, told me in The Hague that fears of terrorism and Muslim militancy had spawned “irrationality” and “a crisis of self-confidence” in democracies. “Let’s have some confidence in ourselves and create a safe, open and critical intellectual environment in which Muslims and non-Muslims alike will move away from paralyzing stereotypes and paradigms.”

A similar sentiment was expressed in the US by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. He told the annual gathering of the Islamic Society of North America, in Chicago in September 2007: “The time has come to stand up to the opportunists, the media figures, the religious leaders and politicians who demonize Muslims and bash Islam, exploiting the fears of fellow citizens for their own purposes.”6

Europeans and North Americans are increasingly cognizant of the ongoing injustices against Muslims and the double standards against Islam. Non-Muslims are engaging in unprecedented inter-faith activities to reach out to Muslims. A growing number of citizens are challenging the official narratives of war and rejecting the racist hypothesis about the inevitability of a clash of civilizations.