Quite a drama is unfolding in advance of the World Conference on Dialogue that is being sponsored by the Saudi king and is scheduled to take place next week at Madrid. Last week all the talk was of the “breakthrough” that had been obtained by the invitation to the conference of an Israeli rabbi, David Rosen. In the event, however, Rabbi Rosen, who was born in England and has served as chief rabbi of Ireland, turns out to be listed in conference materials as being from America.

Then there was the matter of a representative of the Neturei Karta, the anti-Zionist Jewish sect that incurred the wrath of many Jews by sending representatives to Iran to meet with President Ahmadinejad around the time of his Holocaust denial conference. Jews invited to the Madrid conference next week found the inclusion of the Neturei Karta so troubling that, according to one rabbi planning to attend, Marc Schneier of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, the national director of the Islamic Society of North America, Sayyid Syeed, took up the cause, telling the Saudi ambassador to America that unless the Neturei Karta representative was removed and disinvited, he himself wouldn’t go to Madrid.

So the invitation to the Neturei Karta was revoked, but there are also questions in respect of the Islamic Society of North America itself. In documents filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, federal prosecutors charged that the Islamic Society of North America was part of a conspiracy to support the terrorist group Hamas and promote its agenda of destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state. The document describes the Islamic Society of North America as part of the “U.S. Muslim Brotherhood,” a group that described its agenda as “eliminating and destroying the Western Civilization from within.”

The Islamic Society of North America has not been charged with any crime and has denied it is part of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is working in court with the American Civil Liberties Union to get itself removed from the list of un-indicted coconspirators in the case. “People do evolve,” says Rabbi Schneier, who told us that he has worked with the Islamic Society of North America to prepare a public service announcement with rabbis and imams jointly warning against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and also to plan joint activities between synagogues and mosques that are set for November.

On the one hand, the readiness of so many high-profile Christian and Jewish leaders from around the world to accept King Abdullah’s invitation to Madrid may be interpreted as a sign of Saudi strength. Rabbi Rosen himself has warned that it may be just a Saudi propaganda stunt. Even so, it is hard to imagine such a meeting in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, when 15 of the 19 hijackers who struck our country were Saudi. On the other hand, the conference may be a sign of Saudi weakness. After all, it is neither Riyadh nor Jeddah but Abu Dhabi and Dubai that have become the trade and tourism capitals of the Gulf. Iraq has surpassed Saudi Arabia in the level of freedom and democracy it affords its citizens.

And Iran, with its nuclear and missile programs, is emerging as the military power of the region, a Shiite threat to the Saudi royal family, which adheres to Sunni Islam. The Saudis are said to be petrified of the Iranian threat, and if they are seeking alliances with Christians and Jews, that is no doubt one reason. This dialogue is being billed as a religious one. But it is being convened by a king who is not only the custodian of the mosques at Mecca and Medina but also a political leader of a country that, while rich in oil, rests on a foundation that is, in many profound ways, unstable, largely because the individual freedom that has allowed religion to flourish in America does not exist in the kingdom. Absent such freedom it is difficult to imagine a real dialogue.