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I just saw the
movie “Invictus” – the story of how Nelson Mandela, in his first term
as president of South Africa, enlists the country’s famed rugby team,
the Springboks, on a mission to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup and,
through that, to start the healing of that apartheid-torn land.

The almost
all-white Springboks had been a symbol of white domination, and blacks
routinely rooted against them. When the post-apartheid, black-led South
African sports committee moved to change the team’s name and colors,
Mandela stopped them. He explained that part of making whites feel at
home in a black-led South Africa was not uprooting all their cherished
symbols. “That is selfish thinking,” Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman,
says in the movie. “It does not serve the nation.” Then speaking of
South Africa’s whites, Mandela adds, “We have to surprise them with
restraint and generosity.”

I love that line:
“We have to surprise them.” I was watching the movie on an airplane and
scribbled that line down on my napkin because it summarizes what is
missing today in so many places: Leaders who surprise us by rising
above their histories, their constituencies, their pollsters, their
circumstances – and just do the right things for their countries.

I tried to recall
the last time a leader of importance surprised me on the upside by
doing something positive, courageous and against the popular will of
his country or party. I can think of a few: Yitzhak Rabin in signing
onto the Oslo peace process. Anwar Sadat in going to Jerusalem. And, of
course, Mandela in the way he led South Africa.

But these are such
exceptions. Look at Iraq today. Five months after its first truly open,
broad-based election, in which all the major communities voted, the
political elite there cannot rise above Shiite or Sunni identities and
reach out to the other side so as to produce a national unity
government that could carry Iraq into the future. True, democracy takes
a long time to grow, especially in a soil bloodied by a murderous
dictator for 30 years. Nevertheless, up to now, Iraq’s new leaders have
surprised us only on the downside.

Will they ever
surprise us the other way? Should we care now that we’re leaving? Yes,
because the roots of 9/11 are an intra-Muslim fight, which America, as
an ally of one faction, got pulled into. There are at least three
different intra-Muslim wars raging today. One is between the Sunni far
right and the Sunni far-far right in Saudi Arabia. This was the war
between Osama bin Laden (the far-far right) and the Saudi ruling family
(the far right). It is a war between those who think women shouldn’t
drive and those who think they shouldn’t even leave the house. Bin
Laden attacked us because we prop up his Saudi rivals – which we do to
get their oil.

In Iraq, you have
the pure Sunni-versus-Shiite struggle. And in Pakistan, you have the
fundamentalist Sunnis versus everyone else: Shiites, Ahmadis and Sufis.
You will notice that in each of these civil wars, barely a week goes by
without one Muslim faction blowing up another faction’s mosque or
gathering of innocents – like Tuesday’s bombing in Baghdad, at the
opening of Ramadan, which killed 61 people.

In short: the key
struggle with Islam is not inter-communal, and certainly not between
Americans and Muslims. It is intra-communal and going on across the
Muslim world. The reason the Iraq war was, is and will remain important
is that it created the first chance for Arab Sunnis and Shiites to do
something they have never done in modern history: surprise us and
freely write their own social contract for how to live together and
share power and resources. If they could do that, in the heart of the
Arab world, and actually begin to ease the intra-communal struggle
within Islam, it would be a huge example for others. It would mean that
any Arab country could be a democracy and not have to be held together
by an iron fist from above.

But it will be
impossible without Iraqi Shiite and Sunni Mandelas ready to let the
future bury the past. As one of Mandela’s guards, watching the new
president engage with South African whites, asks in the movie, “How do
you spend 30 years in a tiny cell and come out ready to forgive the
people who put you there?” It takes a very special leader.

This is also why
the issue of the mosque and community center near the site of 9/11 is a
sideshow. The truly important question “is not can the different Muslim
sects live with Americans in harmony, but can they live with each other
in harmony,” said Stephen P. Cohen, an expert on interfaith relations
and author of “Beyond America’s Grasp: a Century of Failed Diplomacy in
the Middle East.”

Indeed, the big
problem is not those Muslims building mosques in America, it is those
Muslims blowing up mosques in the Middle East. And the answer to them
is not an interfaith dialogue in America. It is an intrafaith dialogue
– so sorely missing – in the Muslim world. Our surge in Iraq will never
bear fruit without a political surge by Arabs and Muslims to heal
intracommunal divides.

It would be great if President Barack Obama surprised everyone and gave another speech in Cairo – or Baghdad – saying that.

© 2010 New York Times News Service