NYT Special Voice, Thomas Friedman, identifies a stark juxtaposition in today’s column: Outrage and Silence

It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.

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Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.

The Muslim world’s silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward.

Certainly is the a remarkable disconnect here where a brief story about the desecration of a book, holy though it may be to millions, and the actual violence against people (and against mosques) does not evoke similar rage.

The strategy to which he refers, and I think he does so in a somewhat vague fashion, is to find a way to apply cultural and religious to the problem:

If you want to stop a wave of suicide bombings, the likes of which we are seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a big believer that the greatest restraint on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and religious authority. It is what the community, what the village, deems shameful. That is what restrains people.

All true, yet also difficult to achieve.

He does recommend, and I have to agree with him, that it is imperative to et Sunni politicians prominently involved in the constitution-writing process. This, too, may be difficult to achieve.