Rhea Saran: Let me say, right off the bat, that I respect New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and that I generally applaud his efforts to force the less glamorous world issues onto breakfast tables in the West. So, it was particularly surprising to read his December 10th column “The Muslim Stereotype,” and find that his argument fell more than a little flat.

Kristof attempts to show “the West” that their idea of a typical Muslim — i.e., a crazed, homicidal, bomb-toting Osama look-alike — is not accurate. There are, he says, plenty of moderate Muslims in the world. But instead of emphasizing the shades of grey, Kristof slips into stereotyping himself: good Muslims and bad Muslims. In paragraph 5, referring to American stereotypes of Islam, he writes:

“Those stereotypes are largely derived from the less than 20 percent of Muslims who are Arabs, with Persians and Pashtuns thrown in as well. But the great majority of the world’s Muslims live not in the Middle East but here in Asia, where religion has mostly been milder.”

Okay. So now the message is: well, American stereotypes may be spot on when we’re talking about Arab Muslims (or others living in the Middle East), but those Asians, hey, those are the good guys. Halfway through a listing of Asian Muslim virtues, comes this quote:

“We tend to be more tolerant,” Yusof Halim, a prominent lawyer in Brunei, said of Asian Muslims. He then confided: “My honest opinion is that Arabs are male chauvinists.”

Kristof doesn’t challenge or explain this statement either at this point or at any other point in the column. In fact, he ends the piece with this paragraph:

“There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam — the austere fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia — and riverine or coastal Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab the headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam, maritime Muslims have the edge.”

This sentiment is such a throwback to colonial times, it’s embarrassing that it passed editorial muster. Not only does it imply that ignorance is the main reason why some Muslims resort to violence, but it also contributes to the good Muslim-bad Muslim dichotomy.

The frustrating thing about this lapse on the writer’s part is that there were so many other great points made in the column. Yes, it’s true that Muslim countries in Asia are much more free and tolerant than people in the West would expect. Yes, Bangladesh and Indonesia (and Pakistan, though he doesn’t mention it) have had women at the helm of government, something even the United States has never had. Yes, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism have their own bloody and shameful episodes in history. But all these important facts were being overshadowed by the one big hitch in Kristof’s argument — that he seemed to have fallen into the same sort of trap as those he was trying to educate.

Rhea Saran is a graduate student at New York University.