The population of Syria is so inharmonious a gathering of widely different races in blood, in creed, and in custom, that government is both difficult and dangerous.

- Sir Mark Sykes, Dar Ul-Islam: A Record of a Journey through Ten of the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey (1904)

The mufti recounted with fondness a drive he made with his wife from Montreal via Toronto to New York in 1994. Somewhere past Niagara Falls, the couple stopped at a McDonald's. All the seats were taken. "I was dressed like this," the mufti said, pulling at the lapel of his robes, "and my wife was in hijab." An American man, aged about sixty-five, got up and offered them his table. When the mufti declined, the man insisted, "I'm an American, and I can go home and eat. You are my guest."

The gesture impressed Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, who became grand mufti, or chief Sunni Muslim religious scholar, of Syria eleven years later: "A good human being is a good human being. I don't know if that man was Jewish, Christian, or Muslim."

Mufti Hassoun belies the stereotype of the Muslim clergyman. He has preached in the Christian churches of Aleppo, Syria's second city, and he has invited bishops to speak in his mosque. His official interpreter is an Armenian Christian. "I am the mufti for all of Syria, for Muslims, Christians and non-believers," he says, an ecumenical sentiment placing him at odds with more fundamentalist colleagues among the religious scholars known as the ulema.

The contrast with many other Sunni Muslim clergymen is stark. Another Syrian mullah, Sheikh Adnan al-Arour, broadcasts regularly from Saudi Arabia with a different message: "The problem is actually with some minorities and sects that support the regime ... and I mention in particular the Alawite sect. We will never harm any one of them who stood neutral, but those who stood against us, I swear by Allah, we will grind them and feed them to the dogs." Another Sunni preacher, the Egyptian Sheikh Mohammad al-Zughbey, went further: "Allah! Kill that dirty small sect [the Alawites]. Allah! Destroy them. Allah! They are the Jews' agents. Kill them all ... It is a holy jihad."

Read the rest of the essay in the July/August edition of World Affairs.