Missing the Point

Distrust Between West And Islam. ”There’s an osmosis in war,” declares the once idealistic army lieutenant Hearn in Norman Mailer’s classic novel The Naked and the Dead. ”Call it what you will, but the victors always tend to assume the . . . the, eh, trappings of the loser.”  Of course, the ”war on terror” wasn’t really a war, and it is far from clear who emerged from it as victor and loser. Nonetheless, after the tragedy in Oslo, the osmosis is obvious. These sorts of attacks were meant to be the preserve of the Islamists who have dominated a…

A reader writes: In a country founded by Washington, Adams, Paine, Hale, and Jefferson, how can we have reached a point where it has become a slur to call someone an “anti-colonialist”? [From Question For The Day]

The Anti-Muslim Machine < Killing the Buddha. the shitstorm that just passed through town is a familiar one. The proposed Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan is the Brooklyn “madrassa” all over again, with the same cast of conservative activists working to block the mainstreaming of Muslims in the public sphere. Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf wants to create essentially a Muslim YMCA in Lower Manhattan? They say he supports Hamas and has terrorist ties. Debbie Almontaser wanted to head a public school that’d specialize in Arabic? Also—you guessed it—a Hamas supporter with terrorist ties. And repeat.