I Did Not Know That Either

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…

Uncle Sam Is No Imam – NYTimes.com. In each of these cases, counterterrorism has put officials on a collision course with Islamic thought and practice — and, perhaps more dangerously, with the Constitution. The First Amendment prohibits government action “respecting an establishment of religion.”