The new missionaries comeóquite logicallyófrom the New Core

■"Koreans Quietly Evangelizing Among Muslims in Mideast," by Norimitsu Onishi, New York Times, 1 November 2004, p. A1.

■"Afghan Militants Release Video of Hostages" by Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 1 November 2004, p. A11.

Fascinating story on Christian missionaries in the Middle East trying to win converts to Christ. That part alone is not new, since the West has been doing that for . . . oh . . . a good millennium or so. What's fascinating is how the new source for these missionaries is the increasingly fervent Christians of South Korea.

Now the joke is that when the Chinese arrive in a new place, they set a restaurant, the Japanese, a factory, but the Koreans, a missionary church.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to spoof this effort whatsoever. I believe in missionaries of all forms: missionaries of security, missionaries of democracy, missionaries of markets, andómost of allómissionaries of a faith that's has meant the world to me personally. Anybody willing to do these difficult tasks of spreading new rule sets in the Gap deserves our utmost respect, just not our blind loyalty.

For in any evangelical mission, the best purpose of spreading your faith (whatever it is), is that it pushes the locals to either improve their own version or abandon it. I have little doubt that when it comes to religion, the vast majority in the Middle East will stick with Islam when confronted with an alternative, but I am likewise certain that just being offered that choice is an important spur toward reform within Islam, simply because it presents the possibility of being both pious and modern in social, economic and political realms. Modernity is not a threat to true believers, confident of their faith. But frankly, if that were true of Islam in the Middle East, there wouldn't be so many radical fundamentalists trying to take the faith "back to the future" of the 7th centuryóthere would be no compelling reason for a reinvigoration of the faith.

Connectivity is all about options: you stay with what you currently have only because you're happy with the options it provides. Globalization is not about always saying yes to new things; it's about having a choice to try new things and say yes to some and no to others. What's so wrong with radical Islam is its attempt to define, in an upstream fashion, what's okay and what's taboo, the ultimate result being the infantilization of the individual (That which I cannot fathom on my own I intrinsically recoil away from.)

And that's a sad of affairs. There's nothing in the experience I can trace of Muslims living inside the Core that says they must be any more or less stressed by modernity than any other religious adherent living in the same environment. Moreover, it's the freedom of all religions inside the Core (or most of it, on a good day) that provides an inherent dampening effect on all of them collectively (if you get too harsh, people simply move on to a faith that better serves their needsósomething going on in China right now to an unusual degree.)

New adherents to new faiths are always the most devote, because it's a recent and very conscious choice for them. So it's no surprise that the new burgeoning population of missionaries in the Gap will come not from Old Core states, but from New Core ones, where the competition of such belief systems tends to be more vigorous.

Godspeed, I say.

But let us remember, there is nothing more impressive than a person willing to put their lives on the line to extend freedom to others. Extending the freedom of faith is God's work (no matter whom you believe in), but just as impressive are those willing to put their lives on the line for helping to bring democracy to Gap states. Like the recently converted religious believers, you will find these "missionaries" come primarily from states that recently moved in more democratic directions (or have suffered the violence of such efforts to move in that direction). The three hostages now held by the Taliban in Afghanistan right now are from Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and the Philippines, three countries trapped in their own Gapdome in recent decades by all moving in better directions today.

The efforts of such missionaries of democracy are just as important as foreign direct investment flows by multinational corporations into Gap economies and security exports by Core militaries. We need everything and everyone involved in this process of shrinking the Gap.