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It looks like today is going to be pick on Andrew Sullivan day. After discussing how some writers overlook the divisions within Islam, Sullivan writes:

The great risk is that, by our actions, we force sane Muslims into the arms of Jihadists. We have to get smarter than that, it seems to me. We have to see the divisions within Islam as our most powerful weapon, and our cultural diversity and political freedom as our greatest strength.

Only someone who knows nothing about Islam would think it is a unified force. And I really do mean nothing. Pick up a book - any book - on the history of the Middle East and you'll learn this after even the most cursory reading. And if Islam in the Middle East is that deeply divided, imagine what expanding your focus to include Africa and Asia would do to your understanding of those divisions. And it isn't just Sunni vs. Shi'a. There are quite literally hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of different sects within each group, each with their own unique set of interpretations, loyalties, and ideologies.

Our nation's complete lack of knowledge about the rest of the world is the single greatest threat we face in this war on terror. We have no idea who or what we are fighting. We aren't fighting Islam any more than they are fighting Christianity. And just as a vast majority of Christians aren't hostile to the world of Islam, a vast majority of Muslims aren't hostile to the world of Christianity.

The Islamic world was, is, and most likely always will be deeply divided. And although unity has at times been achieved, it has almost always been because unity was needed to oppose a threat from outside. Once that threat receded, however, the divisions reappeared, tearing apart whatever coalition had been temporarily formed. It is a pattern that has repeated itself for more than a millennium. That should count for something in our policymaking, shouldn't it?

AS I wrote a minute ago, its nice to see bloggers like Andrew Sullivan finally educating themselves about the history and current reality of the Islamic world. But really... given how much he has already written on the subject, and given the size of the platform from which he speaks, shouldn't he have done that much sooner?