Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks in The New York Times where Islam’s moderates are. A better question, I think, is “what are progressives and moderates doing to prevent extremists of all stripes from hijacking social discourse?”
Right-wing Christians in the US bemoan a supposed assault on Christianity, since anything less than a state religion will not do. A presidential candidate needs to placate the religious right, reciting revised history in the process. Another candidate attributes his success to god alone. In American society at large, it matters much more that one invoke the name of the proper deity in the proper way than that one have sensible, concrete ideas to put ethical principles into action.
Do these folks not realize that conspicuous piety in fact speaks very poorly of their character, ethics, and value system?
