... Last point I want to make is this. We have to recognize that special challenges are presented by the Muslim world. I think I've earned a right to say this, I was the first president ever to recognize the feast of Eid-al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan every year. To bring large numbers of Muslims into the White House and to consult in every way. The last time we used military power was to protect the lives of poor Muslims, in Bosnia and Kosovo. And I tried to create a peace in the Middle East that would give the West Bank to the Palestinians and protect their equities in Jerusalem and a Palestinian state.

... I think I have earned the right to say that this is partly a Muslim issue because there is a war raging within Islam about what they should think about the United States in particular and the west in general. And the war can be found in America. I was in Buffalo the other day and on the front page of the newspaper, a part-time chaplain at the state prison up there was suspended from her job for bragging on Bin Laden and basically expressing sympathy with the terrorists. The New Republic has a story saying a prominent activist is now in trouble with the White House because he kept bringing Muslims into the White House who actually supported terrorist networks. This debate is going on all over America and all over the world. We've got to flesh this out. We've got to quit pretending like this is not going on.

... One problem is that in the Middle East most governments are characterized either as theocracies, that is, there is no separation between faith and state, or they're secular governments but they're either very weak democracies or they're not real democracies. And underneath there are fundamentalist movements that essentially say the west is the source of all evil, and all truth was revealed and knowable once the Koran was given to Mohammad, and the practices of the Prophet were codified in the ensuing 300 years after his death. So it's all backward looking. No open questions, nothing debatable. And in the complex combustible mixture of a lot of these countries, a lot of the governments allow people to go into the Mosques and demonize us and demonize the West and demonize Christianity and demonize Jews because as long as they do that they think they're shifting the heat of popular distress off of the governments. And a lot of these folks have been our friends, America's friends and my friends. But we have created a discordant world in which it's hard to sort out who's where here. And we've now reached a point with all these people lying dead and these terrorist threats, with the Anthrax and everything where people need to actually say what it is they believe. What do you believe is right and wrong?

(Some Remarks as delivered by President William Jefferson Clinton Georgetown University). November 7, 2001