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    News that prominent Shiite and Sunni leaders met in Iraq today to discuss the terms under which the recent sectarian violence in Iraq could end should give everyone hope. Such news is proof of a greater trend in Iraq proven over the last three years since its liberation from Saddam Hussein and the Baathists and the typical reactionary violence of radical Islam and toward the Middle East’s first predominantly Arab democracy.
    This hope is based in the fact that these sides are willing to talk at all. Consider that only a few years before, these very same groups were mortal enemies with the Sunnis part of a government that regularly tortured and murdered their Shiite brethren. Add to this the flagrant attack on the heart of Shiite Islam by the bombing of the al-Askari mosque, and one sees the glimmer of hope, however tenuous that hope might be.
    This hope takes on another form as well, because all of this is occurring among Iraqis. This is not a US or Western brokered deal. Iraqi Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis chose to sit down together and talk about what can be done to end the violence that has plagued that nation over the past several days. To the Western eye, such a fact may seem unremarkable, but for the region and the world, such a fact is a sign of change.
    Now the world waits on the knife’s edge. If the talks between Sunnis and Shiites hold, and the violence ends, then this is a victory for liberty and democracy in the Middle East. Whatever else may be true, relatively quick end to the recent sectarian violence in Iraq will prove that a new ideal- one separate from the centuries long hatreds within Islam- has truly taken hold. For this reality, we all can hope.
DLH
