NY Times essay

The Times is one of those annoying "registration" sites. In order to use it they want to put a cookie into your computer and identify you every time you go back. That's offensive, but I have done it for years. I figure so much of my life is already in files that I have no control over that one more can't hurt.

Anyway, this one essay is worth registration. The core idea, that there is a fundamental difference between Europeand and Americal perceptions of Islam is both simple and identifiable. Two world views are described. I think she has put her finger on a fundamental social and political fact.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Under the Cover of Islam: "The mass immigration of Muslims is bringing faith back into the public realm and creating a post-Enlightenment modernity for Western Europe. This return of religion threatens secular humanism, the orthodoxy that has prevailed since the French Revolution. Paradoxically, because many Western Europeans feel that they're losing Enlightenment values amid the flood of 'people of faith,' they wind up sympathizing with those in the Muslim world who resent imported values that challenge their own. Both groups are identity protectionists."

Noticed first in Captain's Quarters this morning.