Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian immigrant to the United States and author of an anti-Muslim tirade "They Must Be Stopped", is the latest example of a publishing phenomenon that digs up women from Middle Eastern backgrounds or Muslim countries who know how to wear cocktail dresses and uses them as mouthpieces for racist and xenophobic beliefs that don't get much of a hearing when spouted by angry white men. Check out her crank interview in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday, complaining about how Muslims are taking over America and forcing the University of Michigan to build foot-baths in public bathrooms."I lived in the Middle East for the first 24 years of my life," she says. "Never once did I see foot-washing basins in airports or public buildings." Now, I personally can't vouch for what happens in ladies' bathrooms in the Middle East, but surely Gabriel has seen the many difficult ways by which Muslims ritually cleanse themselves in preparation for prayer in western-style bathrooms. Perhaps Michigan thought its many Muslim students would have an easier time blending into the student body if they didn't have to put their feet in the sink.

But the real problem for Gabriel is really that Muslims have had the bad taste to follow her to the United States, and the gumption to practice their constitutional rights. First foot washing, then jihad. After all she says, that's what "they" did in her native Lebanon. "I grew up in the Paris of the Middle East, and because we refused to read the writing on the wall, we lost our country to Hezballah and the radicals who are now controlling it."

Actually, that's not what happened. Beirut is no longer the Paris of the Middle East (if it ever was) because the region's political ruling classes -- Christian, Muslim, Lebanese, Israeli, Syrian, Palestinian, American, Iranian, etc -- decided it was better to blow the place up than to try to live together. But living together is what Americans do better than anyone in the world, and if Gabrielle doesn't understand this, perhaps it would be better off if she, rather than the Muslims of Michigan, got on the next plane back to Lebanon.

But Clash of Civilization hucksters often ignore the way in which the West -- through colonialism, militarism and our love of dictators -- has helped create the chaos that is blowing back at it us and how the best way we could help moderates in the Middle East fight what is mostly an epic internal struggle over the nature of Islam and the fate of the Middle East (akin to our Reformation and Enlightenment rolled into one) is by holding out our own society as a beacon of tolerance and pluralism. This isn't our civil war, and lady, we don't want yours.

Andrew Lee Butters/Eheden, Lebanon

Is there a link between democracy and litter?

Trashing the Pyramids

We took some visiting American friends to the Giza plateau to see the Great Pyramids of Egypt last weekend. Even after 25 years of visiting or living in Cairo, this is a huge thrill every time. The pyramids of the ancient pharaohs are truly one of the wonders of our world.

Somewhat to my amazement, there was a field of trash at the foot of one of the prime viewing stations. It's somewhat more dismaying in person than it looks in my photo. This is the breathtaking vista where most tourists go to snap treasured photos of themselves with the majestic pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus all in the background. The trash heap flows down a sand dune and is thus thankfully out of view in the tourist photos. But the unsightly mess is there, all the same.

Why?

I said that I was somewhat amazed. I am not really shocked because I well know that Egypt has a problem with public litter. Things have improved over the years, yet almost everywhere you go, and it is worse in some places compared to others, there are empty soda cans, discarded packaging, rotting food and other assorted items of garbage strewn along the way. Even the staircases of some of Cairo's most elegant apartment buildings are often filthy with cigarette butts and other trash. Foreign tourists have no doubt contributed to the litter at the pyramids, but Egyptians as a whole are clearly making an insufficient effort to keep their country beautiful.

I tend to agree with the theory of some local friends that a lack of national pride and spirit have something to do with the lazy attitude toward litter. This, they believe, is related to the lack of democracy in Egypt. "People get nothing out of the government, so they feel that everything outside of their personal space is not their problem," one of them explains.

Of course, this is no excuse. People should take pride in their country and pay attention to the environment whatever kind of government they have. Nor does the theory fully explain the eyesore at the Great Pyramids, since the government itself, rather than the Egyptian citizen, is the authority there. True, the government has cleaned up the pyramids area to a great extent over the years. Unlike in the past, the plateau is fenced off and you actually have to buy a ticket costing about $10 and go through a metal detector to go inside the perimeter. Only incompetence can explain why then the government would allow a trash field to remain at one of the greatest places of antiquity, one of our modern age's most famous tourist sites.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo