By Mark LeVine | January 26, 2006
The Boston Globe

THE NEWLY RELEASED tape of Osama bin Laden marks the second time in two years that the Al Qaeda leader has offered a ”truce” to the West in the war on terror in return for various changes in policy toward the Muslim world, particularly in Iraq, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia.

Quite rightly, bin Laden’s truce offers have been rejected by European and American leaders alike. But while rejecting the messenger, Americans would be wrong to dismiss the idea of a truce with the Muslim world, even with radical Islam.

A truce does not equal capitulation to terrorists or letting Muslims off the hook for crimes committed in the name of religion. Criminals such as bin Laden and his terrorist colleagues can no more offer a truce than could Al Capone or Pablo Escobar; they are murderers whom the world community must bring to justice.

But states, and even communities and cultures, can make truces. And in so doing they can make demands of the other side that are crucial to resolving the conflicts that spawned the violence a truce is meant to stop.

There is ample precedent for this kind of truce in Islam. The prophet Mohammed agreed to the first Muslim truce in 628. Known as the Treaty of Hudaybiyah, it was between the nascent Muslim community and the Meccan pagans, and lasted for two years before being broken by the Meccans.

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