I agree completely with the courageous men and women of Muslim backgrounds--whether they are atheists or practicing Muslims--who have called for a Muslim Enlightenment and have emphasized that this transformation must come from within. These dissidents are the true minority within the Islamic world.

Pope Benedict's remarks at Regensburg, citing a 14th-century text criticizing Islam, can hardly be relevant to those whose views of human rights, women's rights and freedom of conscience have not progressed beyond the Dark Ages. Expecting radical Islamists to take heed of the Pope's views is as futile as it would have been to expect Benedict's distant predecessors, who presided over the Inquisition, to take account of criticism from those whom the church considered "infidels"--that is, everyone who was not a Catholic. The pontiff's citation of a text from the 14th century attests in almost comical fashion to the nature of the glass house from which he is throwing stones.

External forces may compel religious fanatics to recognize political reality but they can do nothing to bring about personal liberation from cruel, irrational beliefs that view human beings as nothing more than the instruments of a vengeful God. The best that outsiders can do--and I am talking about secularists as well as people of liberal faith (a category in which I do not include the theologically conservative Benedict)--is to support those Muslims who are risking their lives to challenge a religious culture that attempts, as so many religions have in the past, to suppress dissent by killing dissenters.

Some day, I hope that there will be an honor role of those Muslims--again, a courageous minority--who have stood up for human liberty and decency without the protection of a papal tiara. Some day--in Baghdad, Tehran, Amman, Cairo--I hope that a statue will be erected to these true Muslim heroes, just as a statue stands in the heart of Moscow as a tribute to the 18th-century Russian poet and human rights defender Alexander Pushkin.

I hope that an Arabic inscription will one day convey the same sentiment as these lines from a Pushkin poem: "I shall be loved, and the people will long remember/that my lyre was tuned to goodness/that in this cruel age I celebrated freedom/and asked mercy for the fallen."

Come to think of it, this would have been a much more appropriate text for the pope to cite than a narrow-minded critique from a medieval scholar.