My favorite liberal is also a Muslim.

Last night I confessed to him that if it weren’t for him, I would be an Islamophobe.

This is not because I believe the tradition of Islam is invalid, only that it seems exceptionally vulnerable to fundamentalist perversion. My Perennialist perspective of traditional religions views these traditions in gradations of esoteric and exoteric understanding. The esoteric core of religious traditions converge toward a single transcendent truth. The exoteric diverges into increasingly incompatible difference. Islam’s exoterism seems to lean violent. I want to know why. Is this caused by its scripture, as Sam Harris claims? Is it the devastation wrought by the oil economy? A vestigial trait of nomadic herdsmen culture?

Susan asked my friend to explain jihad.

My friend said jihad means struggle. He quoted a verse from the Quran:

Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you. But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not.

Susan and I immediately had the same insight and recalled the same verse:

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, two maidservants, and eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Yabok. He took them and crossed the stream with them and then brought across all that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until dawn. When he saw that he could not overpower him, the man wrenched Jacob’s hip in its socket so that the socket of Jacob’s hip was strained as he wrestled with the man. “Let me go,” said the man, “for dawn is breaking.” But he replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” “What is your name?” asked the man. “Jacob,” he replied. “No longer will your name be Jacob, but Israel,” said the man, “for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” Jacob asked, “Please tell me your name. But he said, “Why do you ask my name?” and he blessed him there.