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This was not a private conversation after all.
    "I do not intend to be disrespectful to the
Caliph," said Peter. "I have seen the majesty of your achievement and
the generosity of spirit with which you have dealt with your enemies."
    Alai visibly relaxed. They were now playing the same game.
Peter had finally understood the rules. "What is to be gained from
humiliating those who believe they stand outside the power of God?" asked
Alai. "God will show them his power in his own good time, and until then
we are wise to be kind."
    Alai was speaking as the true believers around him required
him to speak—always asserting the primacy of the Caliphate over all non-Muslim
powers.
    "The dangers I came to speak of," said Peter,
"will not ever come from me or because of the small influence I have in
the world. Though I was not chosen by God, and there are few who listen to me,
I also seek, as you seek, the peace and happiness of the children of God on
Earth."
    Now was the time, if Alai was completely the captive of his
supporters, for him to rant about how it was blasphemous for an infidel like
Peter to invoke the name of God or pretend that there could be peace before all
the world was under the rule of the Caliphate.
    Instead Alai said, "I listen to all men, but obey only
God."
    "There was a day when Islam was hated and feared
throughout the world," said Peter. "That era ended long ago, before
either of us were born, but your enemies are reviving those old stories."
    "Those old lies, you mean," said Alai.
    "The fact that no man can make the Hajj in his own skin
and live," said Peter, "suggests that not all the stories are lies.
In the name of Islam terrible weapons were acquired and in the name of Islam
they were used to destroy the most sacred place on Earth."
    "It is not destroyed," said Alai. "It is
protected."
    "It's so radioactive that nothing can live within a
hundred kilometers," said Peter. "And you know what the explosion did
to Al-hajar Al-aswad."
    "The stone was not sacred in itself," said Alai,
"and Muslims never worshipped it. We only used it as a marker to remember
the holy covenant between God and his true followers. Now its molecules are
powdered and spread over the whole Earth, as a blessing to the righteous and a
curse to the wicked, while we who follow Islam still remember where it was, and
what it marked, and bow toward that place when we pray."
    It was a sermon he had surely said many times before.
    "Muslims suffered more than anyone in those dark days,"
said Peter. "But that is not what most people remember. They remember
bombs that killed innocent women and children, and fanatical self-murderers who
hated any freedom except the freedom to obey the very narrowest interpretation
of Shari'ah."
    He could see Alai stiffen. "I make no judgment
myself," Peter immediately said. "I was not alive then. But in India
and China and Thailand and Vietnam, there are people who fear that the soldiers
of Islam did not come as liberators, but as conquerors. That they'll be
arrogant in victory. That the Caliphate will never allow freedom to the people
who welcomed him and aided him in overcoming the Chinese conquerors."
    "We do not force Islam on any nation," said Alai,
"and those who claim otherwise are liars. We ask them only to open their
doors to the teachers of Islam, so the people can choose."
    "Forgive my confusion, then," said Peter.
"The people of the world see that open door, and notice that no one passes
through it except in one direction. Once a nation has chosen Islam, then the
people are never allowed to choose anything else."
    "I hope I do not hear the echo of the Crusades in your
voice."
    The Crusades, thought Peter, that old bugbear. So Alai
really has joined himself to the rhetoric of fanaticism. "I only report to
you what is being said among those who are seeking to ally against you in
war," said Peter. "That war is what I hope to avoid. What those old
terrorists tried, and failed, to achieve—a worldwide war