“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.” With the audience laughing derisively, he continued: “In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.”
This highlights something that encourages me. I believe - and I bet someone has formalized this thesis, and I'd love to read about it - that the very force which has made Islamism a threat will also limit, contain, and ultimately suppress it. That force is modernity. Islamism works because committed, driven individuals can use technology to coordinate and destroy, and spread the resulting propaganda. It depends on cell phones, text messages, satellite TV, the Internet, and YouTube. But the Islamists will learn that these are communication channels that cannot be controlled. Once you have your population receiving global Qaeda propaganda over the Web, you'll also have them discovering that there are, in fact, homosexuals in Iran.
Another version of that thesis: there will inevitably come a reckoning amongst the forces of anti-Americanism: a time when they discover that in they have more in conflict than in common. One such area is social conservatism; I bet a lot of Columbia students were a little surprised to discover that the Che-like champion of the anti-American cause, whom they were so excited to see, makes Jerry Falwell look like Barney Frank.
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