LOS ANGELES -- Location, in politics as well as in real estate, is almost everything. When British Prime Minister Tony Blair came calling on U.S. President George W. Bush, America's foremost ally raised with Washington the tender issue of repairing badly damaged relations with America's "old Europe" friends. That's not bad advice at all, of course. The views and indeed friendship of Paris and Berlin are important to have, especially over the long run.

But had it been the prime minister of Malaysia or the president of Indonesia showing up at Camp David last week, our Texas Methodist president would have been exposed to a profoundly different perspective. What you see -- and what you lose sleep over -- so often depends not only on where you stand but also with whom you live.

Living in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, not to mention Tehran and Cairo, are a lot of devout Muslims. In Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, Muslims account for 95 percent of the people; in Malaysia (which has twice the population of Belgium), 52 percent. There are 133 million Muslims in China, 10 million in the Philippines.