One can only speculate as to the intended message when Islamist extremists murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan, in February 2002, or what they thought would be the result.

		David Shtulman is executive director of the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee (ShtulmanD@ajc.org).

Pearl's wife, Mariane, said in a statement issued at the time, "From this act of barbarism, terrorists expect all of us to bow our heads and retreat as victims forever threatened by their ruthlessness." If Mariane Pearl was correct in her assessment, then the terrorists were in for a big disappointment, for that single action has resulted in the birth of one of the most important efforts today to rebuild Muslim-Jewish understanding.

The Law of Unintended Consequences states that actions of people or governments often have consequences that are unexpected or unintended. The murder of Daniel Pearl is a case in point. The murderers of Daniel Pearl did not anticipate that the Pearl family in California, rather than collapse in grief, would declare war on the religious and ethnic hatred that took Daniel's life by creating the Daniel Pearl Foundation to promote cross-cultural understanding.

Neither did they anticipate that Prof. Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldoun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington D.C., a son of Karachi and a leading Muslim voice on behalf of interfaith dialogue, would see this murder as symbolic of a collapse of true Islamic values that must be confronted.

Nor could they have anticipated that Daniel's father, Judea Pearl, and Akbar Ahmed would join their voices together for the first time in Pittsburgh, launching what would become an international dialogue for Muslim-Jewish understanding. Yet that is exactly what happened.

When Lewis Jaffe of Latrobe made a blind call to the American Jewish Committee in June 2003, urging us to sponsor a program that would bring Ahmed and Pearl together, no one had any thoughts beyond a single event. But when the program, held at the University of Pittsburgh in October 2003, was so positively received, it became clear that Ahmed and Pearl had a message that needed to be heard.

The program was repeated under AJC auspices in Philadelphia in January 2004, and Stephen Glassman, chairman of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, with the active encouragement of Gov. Ed Rendell, joined the team supporting Ahmed and Pearl.

By the time a third successful program was held in April at the College of William and Mary, the initiative had adopted the formal name, "The Daniel Pearl Dialogue for Muslim-Jewish Understanding featuring Dr. Akbar Ahmed and Dr. Judea Pearl." Media stories about their joint efforts were appearing nationally and in the Muslim world from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia. Invitations to speak were coming from across the United States.

Last month, Stephen Glassman, Lewis Jaffe and I accompanied Akbar Ahmed and Judea Pearl to London for a week of events. Q-News, a monthly Muslim magazine with a reputation for challenging the conventional wisdom of the British Muslim community, sponsored the trip with support from the Stone Ashdown Trust, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the American Embassy.

Ahmed and Pearl helped to launch a new British dialogue program called Aleph-Alif at an elegant reception of 300 people hosted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks accompanied them on visits to the Islamia School where they met with faculty and shared tales about Moses with elementary school children, and to the Jewish Free School, where they discussed the need to break down religious barriers with 200 high school students. A film crew from BBC's Religion and Ethics program filmed the visits.

The Muslim baroness, Pola Uddin, hosted Ahmed and Pearl, together with Lord George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, and Simon Haskell, a Jewish peer, in a packed Moses Room at the House of Lords. David Johnson, charge d'affaires at the American Embassy, hosted a reception and dinner at his home for Britain's most prominent interfaith leaders where they discussed the need to challenge religious extremism.

International media outlets like the BBC World Service, Voice of America and even Al Jazeera sought interview time with Ahmed and Pearl.

Are Ahmed and Pearl changing the nature of the Muslim-Jewish relationship today? Not yet. Attitudinal change within and between communities is a long and difficult process, and there is a great deal of animosity and distrust to overcome. But Akbar Ahmed and Judea Pearl are demonstrating that the fear and hatred generated by religious extremists can be countered by the efforts of individuals equally committed to the shared values of our Abrahamic faiths.

Over the last year I have watched their relationship grow from one of polite respect to committed partnership, and their message evolve from a call for communal understanding to a challenge to communities to confront and reject religious extremism on all sides.

They challenge the rest of us to decide what kind of world we want for ourselves and for our children. Will we wring our hands and blame "the other" in the face of religious violence, hatred and dehumanization? Or will we have the courage to reject religious extremism in all its forms and tell its proponents that there is no place for them in our communities? There is little room in this equation for ambivalence and we will all suffer the consequences of inaction together.