Surveying the state of religious tolerance throughout the Muslim world, Daniel Philpott argues against those who claim Islam is fundamentally incompatible with freedom of religion. He notes that while there are regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Iran that ruthlessly repress deviation from official interpretations of Islam, there are important counter-examples:

Eight of the eleven religiously free majority-Muslim states are in West Africa. . . . The other three are Lebanon, Albania, and Kosovo. While religious freedom varies in this group—in Gambia, for instance, the government enforces some of the rulings of the Supreme Islamic Council, a non-governmental group of religious leaders—none of these divergences prevent these countries from being among the most religiously free in the world.

[These countries] are free not despite or apart from their Islam but because of their Islam. In most of these countries, Muslims are the vast majority while Christians are a significant minority. Islam in these countries typically has a tradition of tolerance toward other religions that goes back centuries and existed well before colonial times. Colonial governments historically allowed broad freedom to practice religion and collaborated with religious leaders. Today, interreligious harmony is common, marked by mutual attendance at religious celebrations, interfaith friendships, and—in some countries—interreligious marriage. . . .

If the religiously free states show that Islam can be free, [a] second pattern—secular repression—provides complementary evidence that Islam is not necessarily the cause of all of the religious repression in the Muslim world. . . . .

Most practitioners of the secular-repressive pattern have been highly authoritarian. . . . They seek to contain and control religion, typically “establishing” a moderate version of Islam and closely controlling the governance of mosques, seminaries, universities, and schools. . . . They will simultaneously suppress more traditional and radical forms of Islam. Secular leaders [such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or the Assads in Syria] have presented these religious figures as enemies of the state and used them to make the case for authoritarian rule.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.