There are a number of points on which Ali Eteraz and I agree. Despite my general hostility to organized religion, I too have little patience for Robert Spencer-type arguments that Islam is possessed with a preternatural desire to force unbelievers into a state of "dhimmitude," nor am I terribly concerned that the minarets of "Eurabia" will soon encircle the Islamisized capitals of Western Europe. As I noted in my Reason column, I have little interest --- and little academic qualification --- in such conversations, and will leave the discussions of Koranic interpretation to theologians and historians. But thankfully, for the sake of Jewcy's readers, there is much on which we disagree. But let me start be reiterating that I too was unimpressed by Wilders film, and his views of Islam still strike me as reductive and, to put it mildly, incomplete.

Prior to Geert Wilders' release of the film, Fitna, Reason Magazine's Michael Moynihan wrote a piece on the subject, which is worth reading as he and I are about to engage in a mini-dialogue on many of the questions it raises.

Michael argued that while Wilders was "something of an extremist" and whose views on Islam were "both reductive and puerile" his film, once released, needed to be engaged "on its intellectual merits." Further, he argued that "not to support Wilders" was tantamount to acquiescing to "bullying" by "religious crackpots."

At the broad level, Michael and I agree that Wilders' film should not have been banned and needed to be engaged on its merits.

In my review of the film, I did precisely that. So did numerous other people,Iranian Student Protestors: Far more deserving of our sympathy than an illiberal fraud like Wilders including Irshad Manji (in both English and Arabic), Eskander Sadeghi (Iranian in the Middle East) and Mona Eltahawy (Egyptian in the US). Not one of these three Muslim dissenters -- each with a long history of disavowing Muslim extremism -- found Wilders' film interesting or coherent. The film is intellectually lacking.

Where I particularly disagree with Michael -- and why I maintain that we owe nothing to Wilders -- is over the fact that Wilders is a threat to liberal society. I do not believe that Wilders' views must be criminalized by the state, but they should be deemed out of the bounds of liberal society much the same way that we consider discrimination on the basis of gender unacceptable. Further, the threat of a civil and democratic discussion --- yes, the threat of a discussion --- about the criminality of his views should be left on the table as a deterrent. Our aim should be to rid liberal society of people like Wilders. This can only start if we ignore Michael’s exhortation about looking out for Wilders’ rights, and spend our time either ignoring or mocking him.

Wilders' obfuscations are pernicious. He conceals his xenophobic nativism by waving (incorrectly translated and randomly picked) verses of the Quran. Sprinkled in the middle of Fitna, which Wilders would have us believe is about the Quran, are Dutch news clippings included for no other reason than to provoke an emotional backlash against immigrants. This is why I don't believe this film had anything to do with theology. Fitna was nothing more than a veiled attack on the newest "outsider." Jews and Chinese in the past, the Polish in London today and Latinos here in the US, have been the butt of similar tactics by ideologues. Demagogues enjoy taking pot-shots at the things immigrants hold closest --- in this case, the Quran. I have no doubt that if it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that Muslims held dear, Wilders would be trying to equate Muslims with Oompa-Loompas. The job of public intellectuals like Moynihan is to cut through the veneer and get to the heart of the matter.

Here, the heart of the matter is nativism, not Islam, and not whether Wilders has an unqualified right to speak.

Today, in Europe, immigrants from Muslim countries are viewed as being inherently incapable of becoming good citizens in the West. It reminds me of the late 19^th century when discussion waged in Europe about how it was impossible for a Jew --- who gives obeisance to Talmudic Law --- to simultaneously give allegiance to the state.

Similarly, the threat of "Eurabia," promulgated by men like Wilders, is not very different from the threat of "Aztlan" raised by anti-immigrant forces in the US. Neither scenario is likely. But in a picture where immigrants are painted as gang-bangers, rapists, arms and drug dealers, rioters, and multiplying like the Borg, the narrative quickly shifts from irrational phantasmagoria to social policies that are either explicitly bigoted, or which turn a blind eye to the immigrants' concerns. This shifting is what men like Wilders excel at.

What Wilders manages to do with relative ease is to shift the discussion away from how power and resources should be apportioned between native and immigrant Europeans into a referendum on jihadism. This is wrong and unfair. By and large, European Muslim grievances with Europe are grievances with the state apparatuses --- with unemployment, with police brutality, with poverty. Yet Wilders and his cohorts would have us believe that the issue is all of Islam all across the world and if you do not characterize immigrants' agitations in a theo-political manner then you are either "with the enemy" or have already turned into a "dhimmi." This is called missing the point.

A perfect example of this missing-the-point occurred during the riots by immigrant youth in France. The New York Times and various other news agencies took a barracking, right here at Jewcy, for referring to the rioters as "youth" and not as "Muslim." Yet, the fact was that the latest rounds of the riots were touched off not only by the 40% unemployment rate --- a rate that matches Saudi Arabia's --- among immigrant youth but the police mandate to deport 25,000 illegal aliens a year and the specific incident of the police rather bizarrely running over a pair of youth on a motorcycle. As the UK Spectator and Reuters both noted, what needn't have been about Islam, became about Islam.

If Wilders were interested in discussing extremism, jihadism or even Islamism, he would have done it in a way that allowed Muslims who oppose these things to join with him. However, he purposefully chooses to marginalize such people in order to pretend that they don't exist. In some quarters this is called bigotry. I’ve already pointed out, even dissenting Muslims are acknowledging that while Wilders shouldn't be banned, they are also feeling that he isn't someone to be taken seriously either. There are reasons for this, reasons having to do with the fact that the guy is not just a bore but also a boor. We don't jail boors, but we shouldn’t be particularly interested in what they are saying either.

What people like Wilders ultimately do is to encourage the worst parts of the discourse to feel empowered, whether Islamophobic or Islamophilic. I am, for example, not particularly surprised that on the heels of Wilders film we have news about French Muslim graves --- from World War I no less -- defiled by Islamophobic elements (which previously used Nazi imagery on Muslim graves). Nor am I surprised that around the world handmaidens of dictators have tried to stir violence in response to the film. (The Jamat-e-Islami’s protests are particularly disgusting given that they participated in the rigged 2002 elections of Pakistan and boycotted the 2008 elections because they were free and fair).

While I do not believe that we ought to be influenced by what ayatollahs and extremists on the other side of the globe think, I do think we ought to speak in a way that will promote our values: democracy, decency and exemplarism. When the philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty went to Tehran to criticize religious oligarchy, their lectures were attended by an astonishing 1500 people. Those of us who profess to support democracy cannot forget that in the world today our allies aren't people like Wilders, but those 1500 dissenters in Iran who brave torture and prison to exchange in the best of our ideas. If for no other reason than for the sake of their emancipatory project, we should reach out to them and tell them: As you fight your supremacists, we fight ours. The only way we can make this showing is if Wilders is aware that he is perpetually "this close" to losing his right to offend. I don't want Wilders criminalized but I certainly don't understand why I ought help make him more audacious.

At the end of the day, Michael, when I bully Wilders, it's not because I am a religious crackpot, or in league with any such people, or antagonistic to free speech, but because I consider Wilders a threat to our liberal principles (and so does the Dutch Parliament). As you said, people like Wilders have a right to offend, but simultaneously people like me have a right to chastise the offensive. My optimistic sense is that in liberal societies people like me far outnumber people like Wilders and always will. I happen to think this is a good thing.

First they told us that not all Muslims were evil. We didn't resist.

Then they told us that not all Muslims were Islamo-fascists. We stayed silent.

Then they told us that not all Muslims were Islamists. We conceded the point.

Now there are no labels with which to stereotype and generalize all Muslims.

I have seen this state of affairs come to pass and I feel bad for my fellow man, who is deprived of access to a word that might allow him to reduce 1.2 billion people to one essential characteristic.

Given that I am already considered by Muslims to be part of the Crusader-Neo-Con-Zionist alliance to undermine, subvert, and sabotage Islam – not to mention seduce-all-Muslim-women-without-marrying-them-four-at-a-time – I thought I would go ahead and offer non-Muslims a little bit of information that will assist them in stereotyping my people.

Here it goes: my friends, most Muslims are Muslamists. It is a fact of which I am only now becoming aware.

Napoleon Bonaparte: Muslim Due to my delay in identifying this malaise, I, humble House Muslim, avid fantasizer about white girls, rabid luster after Jewish approval, secret puppet of the American Enterprise Institute, perennial supporter of Paleo-cons, Neo-cons, Deceptacons, and A-Kon, ask for an apology from all my real and imagined masters: I should have told you about this sooner. If you would be so kind as to re-stamp my "moderate Muslim" card, I will promise to never let myself be so lax in my service.

Having said that, let me blare the alarm loud and forthright. Let us become vigilant. Let us pay attention. Only the fate of a Western civilization (that has been intact for three thousand years) is at stake!

I have found, looking back at my life, that Muslamists are everywhere. They are always slithering around with their slithery little tongues, slithering with slither. Muslims have been Muslamist at parties; Muslamist in thoughts; Muslamist in class-room arguments; and yes, Muslamist during sex.

The Muslamist phenomenon is a difficult one to define but perhaps it can be illustrated through my first open experience with it.

I was a wee child at a desi auntie's party – in Muslamist code you call all marriedGöthe: Muslim women "aunties" and all married men "uncles" – eating a helping of biryani and gosht. A college aged Muslim brother, a dapper pseudo-intellectual (defined as a Muslim who quotes leftist theory in order to support Islamic revolution but hates actual lefties such as feminists, queers and transgendered), was discussing European history with the uncles.

All the uncles were doctors – due to the MD next to their name they were considered by all the fawning riff-raff as the apex of Muslim success – and presumed to have an IQ six to seven hundred points higher than us mortals.

"I believe it was after Napoleon's imperialist and colonialist entry into Egypt in 1798," said the Pseudo-Intellectual, "that the meta-narrative of Western Hegemony truly brought itself to bear against the Placid Palaces of the Islamic Empires of Yesterday!"

With the characteristic nonchalance – as well as characteristic ability to miss the point – of the Muslim doctor-god, one of the uncles with a heavy Arab accent leaned forward and grasped the Pseudo-Intellectual by the collar.

"You aaaaare, ze, tokking abou ze Napoleon?"

The Pseudo-Intellectual replied: "Yes, Napoleon…"

"Bona Party?" yelled out another of the doctor-gods, this one a Bangladeshi Ob-GYNShakespeare: Muslim woman (though I repeat myself). "You arrrre the thaaking about that the Napoleon?" The glee in his eyes far exceeded the glee that shone in them on his wedding night, when he lost his virginity at forty seven years of age after seven fellowships and three residencies.

"Yes uncle!" said the flustered Pseudo-Intellectual. "Napoleon's incursion into Dar-al-Islam! The natural hegemonic culmination of the Enlightenment dialectic! That Napoleon!"

The doctor-gods looked at one another. Silence filled the room. In the living room, the aunties stopped doing their dance of seven veils (which is what all Muslim women do when alone). I stopped chewing and shifted my eyes side to side.

All at once, the doctor-gods of the community leaned forward and like the Athenian chorus, sang out together:

"Did you know Napoleon was a Muslim?!"

That, my friends, is Muslamism in a nutshell. It is the belief, dogmatic and secure, unimpeachable and ideological, that all famous people are all covertly Muslim, that all inventions ever made are due to Muslim ingenuity and that all events in the world somehow connect back to Islam – though most of the time we just don't know how. Like all ideologies, there are moderates and extremists. Moderates tend to only believe in the possibility of a connection to Islam if there is some minuscule amount of evidence offered by the historical figure.

Extremists need no evidence. Their mere assertion – "He was Muslim!" followed by a pronounced nod of the head (up and down for Arabs, side to side for Pakistanis) – is sufficient.

According to Muslamist theory, the great German poet Goethe, despite being a devout Christian, was a Muslim because he appreciated Sufi poets such as Hafiz and Omar Khayyam.

Shakespeare, despite promoting all sorts of vices, was a Muslim – a Sufi woman at that (and no, not a Jewish woman).

Henry VIII, despite being the first Anglican, was Muslim because he had multiple wives.

Dante, despite his hatred of Muhammad, stole his story from Muslim sources.Nietzsche: Muslim atheist

Thomas Aquinas, a Christian saint, was secretly a Muslim because he relied on Averroes' books.

Columbus probably wasn't a Muslim, concede the Muslamists, but he relied on Muslim navigators and captains to find the new world. In Muslamist parlance reliance is a form of constructive belief.

Nietzsche, despite his atheism and hatred of organized religion, was more or less a Muslim too, because he said that Spain's Islamic baths were beautiful and that there was something commendable in the Wahhabi antipathy to alcohol. Muslamism towards Nietzsche is particularly strong, with Allama Muhammad Iqbal, India's foremost Muslim philosopher once declaring that had he been alive before Nietzsche suffered dementia he would have been able to convert Nietzsche to Islam.

Obviously, as already discussed, Napoleon was a Muslim – based on the mere fact that he owned a Quran and that later it was discovered that he had read it.

The Muslamist list of other individuals in history, who no sane person could conclude were Muslim, is long – and sometimes even extends to individuals who preceded Islam.

However, historical Muslamism pales in comparison to its contemporary version, of which Michael Jackson has been the pre-eminent ambassador. Living in Pakistan in the 1980's, I met Extremist Muslamists who were thoroughly convinced that Jackson was a Muslim. Their reasoning was simple:

"All popular American blacks are Muslim! Elijah Muhammad, and Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X! Michael Jackson is black and he is popular, therefore…!"

When recently, Jackson purchased a palace in Bahrain, these same Muslamists cameMichael Jackson: Muslim until he bleached his skin rushing forward with a knowing smile on their face. "The King of Men!" they sang, referring to the Prophet Muhammad. "And now The King of Pop! Islam is truly a perfect religion!" When I pressed these uncles about The King, Elvis, I was summarily dismissed. "He would have been too but he just didn't get a chance to encounter Islam. Our evangelism was weak in the 50's." As of yet, there are no Muslamist theories about King James (but wait till he gets traded to the Brooklyn Nets).

Muslamists aren't completely irrational though. Sometimes they will confer Islam upon an unwitting person only to later strip the individual. Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington falls in this category. When he starred in Spike Lee's film "X", Denzel became a household name among Muslims. To this day, graying Muslim aunties overcome their latent fear of their children's black friends by saying, "well that Denzel is good black man so your friend might be safe to play with too." When as a youth my Sunday school teacher played Spike Lee's film for us in class, one of the Muslamist children next to me leaned in and told me "that the actor converted to Islam after playing a Muslim!"

However, Denzel's adoption by the Muslamists was short-lived. In the late 90's, Denzel starred in the film "The Siege" which most Muslims thought was akin to a cinematic hate-crime.

"He cannot be Muslim!" said Muslamists at the Islamic Center I attended. "No one involved in that film can be Muslim, even that Arab, Shalhoub, cannot be Muslim!" Another Muslamist chimed in. "Did you know that Allah punished the director of that film? He was driving and he hit a stop sign and the pole speared his brain?"

Most recently, Princess Diana and Britney Spears have been the favored Muslims among Muslamists given the former's relationship with Dodi al-Fayed and the latter's tryst with a British-Pakistani paparazzo.

Still, perhaps nothing better reveals the potency of Muslamism than the fact that it has infiltrated the sex life of average Muslim couples. Even Islamo-fascism couldn't pull that off.

I was once at a banquet sitting with some young Muslim males. We were discussingWill Smith: Muslim Scientologist how one distinguishes a Muslim female who just appears engaged – many single Muslim girls tend to wear a ring on their ring finger – from one who is truly engaged. Conversation shifted to "post-marital action." Intoxicated on leechi flavored lassi, the brothers revealed their inner most yearnings. "Is it Islamically permissible to drink your wife's breast milk during the sexual act?" asked one, in preparation for his wife's pregnancy. "No!" came the reply. "If you drink her milk then under Islamic law you are equivalent to her child. Then you will not be able to have sex with your wife because she will be your mother."

"What is the Islamic view on role-playing?" asked another. Immediately the attention shifted to him. However, because role-playing somehow seemed to most of us more taboo than drinking your wife's breast-milk, no one followed up on his inquiry. Later when we were alone, the brother revealed his quandary. He and his wife liked to role-play as various celebrities.

"Don't worry," he assured. "Before we get it on, we role-play my wedding to the celebrity. You know I keep it Islamic! Anyway, all was good when my wife pretending to be other women and I was just myself."

"So what's the problem?" I asked.

"Well, now she wants me to pretend to be other men! In theory I'm cool with that, but you know Muslim women can't be married to non-Muslim men! How can I give this to my wife? Its not allowed under Islam!"

The answer, of course, lay with Muslamism.

"Why don't you role-play her marrying some celebrity who everyone thinks is a Muslim?"

"Who?"

"You could try Will Smith!" I said. "He played Muhammad Ali in the film Ali. He probably converted at some point. I heard rumors…I mean, his kid is freaking named Jabari…"

The beleaguered husband shook his head for a while. "No, me and Will are not the same body type, you know? My wife likes my body type."

"Tall, dark and skinny?"

"That's it!" he said with a yelp. "I know a celebrity that everyone thinks is a Muslim, which must mean he is a Muslim!"

"Who?" I asked.

"Barack Obama!" said the Muslamist. "You know that brother is a Muslim! I don't know why he fronts with this 'I am a Christian' business!"

It should be apparent to everyone that Muslamism threatens the future of WesternBarack Hussein Obama: Well, duh civilization. If Muslamists can think that real people are Muslim, then what will happen once they start thinking cartoons are Muslim? Unless in an act of collective fiat we become Enlightenment Fundamentalists and declare war on Muslamism we will never be able to rid ourselves of this scourge.

After diagnosing the problem, it bears asking how Muslamism can be defeated. Obviously, the first step is for some illiberal Guardian of the West – with a menacing beard reminiscent of Leonidas to give him gravitas – must launch a website.

MuslamistWatch.org, should be set up immediately; on it, the latent traces of Muslamism in society must be identified and collected. Once it establishes a regular readership of five to six thousand people we will be ready for the next step.

Then the intellectual attack will commence. The most feasible counter-Muslamism strategy is to reveal it to emanate from non-Muslim sources. That would attack the Islamocentrism that lies at the heart of Muslamism.

Thankfully, there are many examples of religious self-obsession that precede Islam, the most potent of which is Hinduism. Indian uncles are notorious for claiming that Islam's Ka'ba is really a Hindu shrine, that Muhammad is a character from the Gita, that the West got sexual positions from the Kama Sutra, that Hegel stole his philosophy from the Vedas and that Hindus invented math because they were the first to come up with numbers.
If Muslims can be shown that Muslamism is just a re-creation of Hindu egoism, then over time Muslamism may lose its draw.

Then, happy, shining, liberated Muslim youth can usher in the Islamic Reformation cum Enlightenment cum Counter Reformation cum Sexual Revolution cum Chevy Revolution that will save the world.

Somewhat based on partly true events.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has announced plans to organize an "interfaith conference" among Jews, Muslims, and Christians. He invites "representatives of all the monotheistic religions to meet with their brothers in faith" in Saudi Arabia, in order to foster "respect among the religions."

King Abdullah's initiative is excellent and extremely positive. A conference of openKing Abdullah and sincere dialogue between representatives of the three Abrahamic traditions can only be a step forward. My only concern is that the diversity of Islamic opinion be fully represented, but indications from the Saudi kingdom are that King Abdullah recognizes the negative impact of Wahhabism, Deobandism, and other fundamentalist sects on the future of Islam. I hope that Jewish and Christian representatives will participate in such a conference with confidence in their own revelations, and will not give way to "politically correct" accommodations with Wahhabism.

Jewish and Christian representatives should understand that mainstream Islamic tradition respects the People of the Book and expects their teachers and other advocates to present their viewpoint in a learned and insightful manner, and not to engage in nonsensical rhetoric intended to improve relations with the Muslims by offering empty compliments. Jews and Christians who meet with and enter into dialogue with Muslims should do so from a position of self-respect, not of self-abasement. I hope and expect that Muslims at such an event will conduct themselves similarly.

In Chris Hedges' New York Times bestselling, Oprah-endorsed book American Fascists, Hedges repeatedly uses the term 'Christo-fascism'.

Hedges essentially equates fundamentalist Christians in the deep South with Nazis and Japanese fascists. I have no love for Evangelicals -- especially given my time among them -- but it's obvious that Hedges has not read any Yukio Mishima. Fascism was directly connected with racial purity and physical prowess. Christian fundamentalism is not. If it's not okay to use the term 'Islamo-fascist' because Islamists aren't corporatists, then it's not okay to use 'Christo-fascist' because fundamentalist Christians aren't concerned with biology.

It's sad that men like Rove and Bush, who cared nothing for Evangelicals, have givenShould read "No to 'Bush Christian Fascists'" Evangelicals such a bad rap that you can now reach bestseller status by calling them names. But 'Fascism' is a term with a particular meaning and reference, and shouldn't be inflated to include just any extremist movement.

It certainly shouldn't be inflated to include a movement that is not universally malign. There are some great Evangelicals like Jim Wallis, and even Mike Huckabee is intellectually honest (as per his appearance on the Tyra Banks show). During the Pastor Wright flap, Huckabee said that it was unfair to read too much into Obama's connection with Wright. That doesn't sound like the making of totalitarianism.

Those who (like me) oppose using the term 'Islamo-fascist' and opposed "Islamo-fascism Awareness Week" ought to have the intellectual consistency not to use 'Christo-fascist'. (Encouragingly, another Muslim writer, Shadi Hamid of the Project for Middle East Democracy, agrees.)

The case is different with the terms 'Islamist' and 'Christianist', frequently used in in political parlance as synonyms for 'Islamo-fascist' and 'Christo-fascist'. That conflation is mistaken. Islamism is political Islam of the non-violent variety, i.e the sustained political program by conservative Muslims to acquire --- not impose --- theocratic rule within their nation-state.

It is unhelpful, even from a pragmatic perspective, to collapse 'jihadism' (which refers to a violent movement) and 'Islamism'. The reason is that equating Islamism with violence ruins the opportunity to encourage post-Islamist groups -- who are roughly akin to Germany's Christian Democratic Party and represent a case of Islamism defeating itself using self-evaluation. On the same grounds, if Hedges had been more careful with his language, he would have used the term 'Christianism' to apply to the Evangelicals in his book, since by his analysis, they too are seeking to acquire --- not impose --- theocratic rule using non-violent means.

According to a recent survey, Americans are very likely to leave the faith into which they were born and brought up -- if you count shifts from one Protestant denomination to another, a whopping 44 percent of Americans have changed their religion. Our post about this a few weeks ago sparked some serious commentary, and ultimately inspired us to assemble a collection of American conversion stories. Below you'll find personal accounts of conversions to Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christian Science, and Islam. If you or someone you know has a conversion story to share, add to this collection in comments!

Torah Teresa Lane, United Methodist to Jewish: I converted to Judaism almost four years ago. I did a conservative conversion through a relatively formal class. As the only “non-coupled” person in the class, I was a bit of a novelty. It was kind of great, as it gave me an automatic air of sincerity, but it also meant that I got a lot of the question, “And why exactly are you converting?”

So here’s my answer: I grew up in a very Jewish area of St. Louis; I may be off on my stats, but I think my high school was about 40% Jewish. Then I went to a college, where, let’s just say, Hillel is a big deal. All my life most of my friends have been Jewish, so I felt somehow connected to Judaism in that way. Even though I grew up in the Midwest, I have very little concept of a world where Jews are an actual minority. Not long after college I dated a guy who brought me to a seder, and I was hooked (on Judaism; the guy didn’t last). I picked up books on Judaism (Heschel’s The Sabbath, Kushner’s To Life!) and decided to take an “Introduction to Judaism” class. The idea was just to learn some more, not necessarily to convert. But, to be honest, that statement about "learning some more" kind of sounds like BS now, even to me. I must have been searching for more than I consciously realized.

Four years after entering the mikveh, I’m not really observant. Which, it seems, a fair number of people find funny. All the same, there's a lot I love about Judaism. The way it celebrates life, the attitude of stumbling through life as best we can, trying to make it better, but having that mostly be enough. Even “Jewish guilt” (though because I don’t have a Jewish mother I may not be qualified to use that phrase) is so different from the Christian guilt of my adolescence that it’s hugely refreshing to me. I love the rituals of Judaism - lighting candles, hearing the same prayer over and over at services, the seder. I find them beautiful and comforting, even if they are still sort of foreign and a little bit stressful for me. Perhaps most of all I love the sense of belonging to a community, or at least knowing it’s there should I choose to become more involved.

I am sometimes jealous of people who grew up as Jews, who know all the little things that Jews just do, that they don’t teach you in a conversion class. But sometimes I know that I'm lucky to be without the baggage of memories of being shushed in services and dragged to Hebrew school; that I consequently have a unique opportunity to appreciate all the beauties of Judaism.

Daibutsu Buddha Brad Warner, Non-practicing Protestant to Zen Buddhist Monk: I'm not sure I ever really "converted" to Buddhism, because before I got into Buddhism I had no real religious affiliation at all.

When I was a kid I lived in Nairobi, Kenya for three years. There were a lot of Indian people and Indian culture around there. One of my dad's best friends was Indian and when we'd go over to his house I used to see all the paintings of Krishna and stuff. His wife and kids were vegetarians, which is something I'd never encountered back in Akron, Ohio, where I was from. I found all that fascinating. Later on when we returned to Ohio and I got to be a teenager, I started thinking a lot about death. That's what teenagers do, I suppose. But I had extra reasons since two of my aunts were, at the time, dying of an incurable genetic disease that I stood a good chance of inheriting myself.

I looked into Christianity but it all seemed so cheap and tawdry and fake. I was interested in Judaism as well, but it seemed too closed to outsiders. In college I looked for some kind of Indian religion to study, thinking that might be a more pure path. I could only find one course available and it was Zen Buddhism. I had no interest at all in Buddhism and would have taken absolutely any other Indian religion if it had been offered. But Zen Buddhism was all they had, so I took it.

The first day of the first class the teacher read this piece called the Heart Sutra, which contains the line "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." When I heard that I was hooked. I had no idea what the Hell it was supposed to mean, but I knew it was right. I'm still trying to work out what that line means...

The Golden Temple Sat Daya Singh, Roman Catholic to Sikh: I was raised Roman Catholic, and was first exposed to the Sikh path early in life, when a preschool friend was a Sikh. My next major contact was while living in New Mexico for a few months in 2005. Since I do not view Sikhism in purely religious terms, I do not feel like I ever left my previous religion. I look at my adoption of a Sikh lifestyle as an upgrade. Sikhism is not a religious-based dogma. The principles of a Sikh lifestyle (uncut hair, a vegetarian diet, constant meditation on God, selfless service, etc...) are used to illuminate the path to happiness. They are markers on a map up the mountain where the peak is unshakeable serenity. By being stronger in myself, my presence can help others.

My previous lifestyle was not bringing me as much serenity as I sought. I became much more stable and strong as a Sikh. It felt like upgrading from DOS to Mac OS/X. The most difficult part of my "upgrade" has been my dealings with my family. I can only compare it to experiences I have read of homosexuals coming out of the closet. Initially they were furious, and I can often sense their bewilderment in conversation.

Quran Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, Unaffiliated/Protestant to Muslim: A little more than a year ago, on February 19, 2007, I published a statement in Jewcy about my road to Islam. I have been asked to restate the story of my becoming Muslim in a simpler form. For many people in the U.S., it is obviously shocking to hear that someone with a “Jewish” family name became Muslim. (Elsewhere it is typically assumed I am of German Christian background.) Jews who react in this way often seem to forget that people with “Jewish” family names may not be halakhically Jewish. In my case, my mother came from a Protestant Christian family, and although my parents were leftist and antireligious, the first faith of which I gained detailed knowledge was Protestant Christianity.

I later explored Buddhism, Catholicism, and Judaism before becoming Muslim; my journeys took the form of travel, reading, and study. But I was not what we call in California a “shopper for God.” I was an intellectual with religious beliefs, not a compulsive joiner seeking a home. In my new book, The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony, which will appear at the end of summer 2008 from Doubleday, I describe my encounter with the Jewish Kabbalah as a peak moment in my spiritual development. But my introduction to Kabbalah--which is so deeply influenced by Islamic mysticism or Sufism that it has been said that Kabbalah is Sufism in Jewish garments--proved a bridge to Islam for me.

My entry into Islam may be explained most basically as follows: the Islamic conception of God is simpler than that in the other monotheistic traditions; the Islamic path to God through Sufism is the most direct. I love Christianity and Judaism but Islam is rigorous in its rejection of anthropomorphism, i.e. equation of the form of the Creator with the form of the human being. This embodies, to me, a liberation of the mind. All the rest – the problems besetting the sacred Jewish people because of their small numbers, the infection of contemporary Islam with radicalism – are matters of human history, not religion. I found in Islam a purity very close to that in Judaism, but with a broader, more universal reach – Judaism for gentiles, as Saadiah Gaon argued. And since I was born a gentile, this path, which may seem more difficult to others but was simpler for me, beckoned. Finally, if I may be forgiven a bit of immodesty – Christianity and Judaism have a surfeit of modern intellectuals. Islam today needs intellectuals more than clerics, demagogues, or academics. And so in Islam I found a spiritual and rational place.

Star Of David Paul Widen, Protestant to Jewish: A few weeks ago I barged into the office of a shaliach that previously had declined to take my case before the special committee at the Ministry of Interior that decides who gets to convert (an illegal act, I later learned [his declination, not my barging into his office]). With his secretary as interpreter we were all sort of shouting for a few minutes, which I guess is what it took to make them realize that I'm serious and that I'm not giving up. However, they kept saying that I didn't have enough to show for myself ("What, you've only davened three times a day for six months?") and that my letters of recommendation were insufficient. I demanded that this shaliach see me again in a couple of months, at which time I assured him I'd have more to show for myself (e.g.,Yeshiva studies). He told me OK, to set up a meeting with the secretary. So the two of us went out of the rabbi's/shaliach's office and into the hallway, where we continued talking, and she asked, "What's the rush? Why don't you just wait for six months and then come back?"

I was incredulous. "I'm 30. I want to convert and get married and get on with my life." She wasn't convinced. "The Moshiach might come," I said, and this teenage, national-service excuse for a human being, started laughing at me. I got tears in my eyes and I said, "What are you laughing at? You know it's true, you know it's true." And I thought, "Wow, I almost believe this myself."

"Credo quia absurdum" as the saying goes. "I believe because it is absurd." To proclaim this impossibility, to demand this, to stay true to this hope every day when nothing in the world seems to ever hint that it will happen, that is how I see Judaism. Judaism tells me that there is something wrong with the world, that it's broken on a fundamental level. This appeals to me, because this is how I feel.

It is strange to long to be a part of religious community whose members are completely indifferent to my longing: It's even perceived as a bit suspicious, almost pathological. In one breath you can become a Christian or a Muslim: A simple prayer and you're a gold member. In Judaism, however, the potential proselyte is to be turned down thrice before being accepted: Thrice is the door to be slammed shut in his face. It's sort of like the movie Fight Club, where the candidates to Tyler Durden's nihilistic revolutionary club "Project Mayhem" are forced to stand at attention for three days while systematically being ridiculed by him for even trying to be accepted. Or, in a more tasteful metaphor, like Imre Kertesz's book Fateless, in which the Jewish protagonist is ostracized by his fellow inmates at the concentration camp because he doesn't speak Yiddish. "Di bist nischt ka jid, d'bist a shaygets. You're not a Jew, you're a Gentile," Kertesz writes. "That day I felt that I was struck by the same awkwardness, the same creeping insecurity that I remember from home, as if I didn't meet the criteria of the ideal, in one word: a little bit as if I were Jewish."

Christian Science Seal Kelly Riley, Catholic to Christian Science: I was raised Catholic, the youngest of eight siblings. We all went to Sunday school, we all went to catechism. At catechism they'd tell me that I was bad, that I was going to go to hell, just that I was inherently bad, and if you get hurt or sick, it's a punishment of some kind.

My oldest brother is nearly 20 years older than me, so I was still very young when he got married. They were Catholic also. His first child was born healthy, but his second child got very sick when he was one. Doctors were baffled, and despite taking the child everywhere, no one could heal him. Getting desperate, my sister-in-law remembered someone from her college days--one of her roommates--who was a Christian Science practitioner. She tracked her down and said, "My child is going to die in six months, can you help me?" Her old roommate, who was in New York, said she could help. She flew out to Michigan, stayed with them, and within a week she had healed the child. After that, my brother and sister-in-law said, "That's it, we're turning to Christian Science." My sister-in-law even became a practitioner. They had six kids, raised them all in Christian Science, and they all turned out super successful.

I remember times when I was a kid and I would get ill, and my parents--even though they were Catholic--would send me to my brother's house. My father just knew that something was good there. My sister-in-law would tell me that I was good, that God loved me. She was purely positive, which was confusing because it contradicted everything I'd been taught in Catechism and Sunday School. It was really hard to comprehend.

Eventually I grew up and moved out to California. I was in a horrible relationship--I was 22, living the good life, very rich in a big mansion, but I was living in hell. I was getting beaten by my husband. We're talking broken arms, broken legs--you name it, I've had it all. I had watched one of my sisters transform her life through Christian Science as well, and I would call her, locked in the bathroom after a beating, and she'd heal me over the phone.

Finally I said to myself, "That's it, I'm going to do it." My brother flew out, helped me get out of that marriage, and I came to Christian Science.

Jewish Symbols Michelle Golland, Psy.D., Catholic to Jewish: I was raised Catholic. We were religious when I was younger but even when my family really stopped attending church, I continued on after college. I even found a Catholic church when I moved away from home and up to San Francisco. In a way I was searching for a community but it seemed not to be found for me within Catholicism. I loved the pageantry and ritual but could not find comfort or peace in the dogma and lack of debate.

As a sophomore in college I started to explore different spiritual paths. I finally settled on Judaism because I felt inspired and challenged at the same time. I realized that while in Catholicism I was "being good" to get into heaven, Judaism was about "doing good" to experience "heaven on earth." I respond to the focus on the present, which is grounded in tradition and ritual.

My parents were supportive of my interest in and eventual conversion to Judaism, in part because they loved my boyfriend, Michael, who was Jewish. They were happy I was going to marry a "nice Jewish boy." This was important, because I tended to bring home more rebellious guys that frankly scared them a little. The struggle I have with my family of origin is not specifically religious, but more an issue of making different life choices overall. Inviting them in and creating a sense of inclusion was essential to fostering a happier relationship with them.

I have been a Jew for sixteen years. Soon I will have been a Jew longer than I was a Catholic. I actually look forward to that year, I guess because I believe I was waiting to discover my Jewishness my whole life. Who I am as a person, the things I long for, how I fight authority, the way I question things and want answers, the experience of having a personal connection with God which requires no middle man—whether that is Jesus or a Priest—feels at home and honored in Judaism.

I was always the child in the room pointing out the big elephant that nobody wanted to see. My catechism teacher—who finally kicked me out of class for asking too many inappropriate questions about birth control and abortion—would agree I am a much better Jew, because I failed miserably as a faith-filled Catholic. My spiritual awakening within Judaism has many layers that are still being discovered. The Torah for me is one big storybook that I choose to attach myself too. I gain insight, wisdom and hope from the reading of these stories, which are so beautifully filled with human flaws and struggles. As a Jew I don’t believe that any one religion or spiritual path is better or “true,” it’s just personal.

There is an emerging Islamic Counter-Reformation -- an attempt led by traditional Islamic scholars to try and wrest authority back from demagogues and terrorists.

In the late 90's and early parts of this century, Islamic clerics saw people like Bin Laden trying to wrest authority from them, the clerics came together and coalesced. With backing from the King of Jordan, they issued the historic Amman Message whose purpose was to try and eliminate the ideaRipe for reinterpretation? of takfir among Muslims. Takfir is the practice, by one Muslim, of casting another Muslim out of Islam (which then makes it permissible to attack the apostate). It had long been strictly forbidden by traditional clerics, but was revived by 20th century Islamists in order to make it easier for them to cleanse their opponents. Therefore, an attack against takfir was powerful attack against extremism (and, as I argued, an important forerunner of a more embracing view of apostates). Many of these scholars are trying to set up a centralized House of Fatwas which would only permit the power of fatwa to those who are adequately qualified.

Emboldened by the positive reception of the Amman Message, last year Islamic clerics then sent a conciliatory letter to the Pope. The gesture was received warmly by Pope Benedict (coming off his own controversial comments regarding Islam).

Seeing that conciliation and dialogue were beneficial (and getting picked up in the media), traditional clerics pressed ahead. Recently in India, 20,000 clerics declared terrorism un-Islamic. The act is significant because it comes out of the ultra-orthodox Deoband school. Also recently, the Department of Religious Affairs in Turkey, began to cull objectionable hadith narrations.

Today, Muslim clerics sent a "letter of harmony" to Jewish leaders as well, yet another positive development. It gets past the geo-political discussion and focuses squarely on matters of faith -- as many of us have long encouraged Muslim leaders to do. It says in part:

There is more in common between our religions and peoples than is known to each of us. It is precisely due to the urgent need to address such political problems as well as acknowledge our shared values that the establishment of an inter-religious dialogue between Jews and Muslims in our time is extremely important.

Failure to do so will be a missed opportunity. Memories of positive historical encounters will dim and the current problems will lead to an increasing rift and more common misunderstandings between us.

The initiative is being advanced by Akbar S. Ahmed, a former high-commissioner of Pakistan to Britain, and a well regarded public intellectual among Muslims.

This letter seems to be an initiative led by Western Muslim leaders. It has not come out of the Muslim majority world. In other words, it is just one baby step rather than anything historic. However, it does bode well as it comes on the heels of a declaration in Tikkun magazine by a prominent traditional cleric in America that holocaust denial is un-Islamic. The mere enunciation of such ideas is positive, as it arms clerics in other parts of the world to have precedent they can call upon.

Not only that, but many of the more conciliatory advances of traditional scholars around the world have had significant connection with Muslim leaders in the West. The pluralist and inter-faith Islam being developed in the Western world (as well as in India) seems to be going into the Muslim world and emboldening the pluralist minorities there. This, actually, has been a longstanding trend within Islamic history. The Islamic "fringes" -- i.e. the parts geographically closest to non-Muslims -- have always produced the more universalist and syncretic versions of Islam (i.e. Islamic Spain, Bosnia, and India) -- ironically, this historical trend directly contradicts Huntington's assertion about Islam's bloody borders; in fact, its actually the other way around.

If there is a hope for a reduction to anti-Semitism among Muslims, there will have to be more letters of harmony until Arab, Iranian and Indo-Pak scholars feel emboldened enough to take a stand on the matter as well. However, there will also have to be genuine scholarly works that deconstruct the various anti-Semitic interpretations that scholars have assigned to Jews in the past. An honest and modern interpretation of texts is as necessary as conciliatory letters.

In Denmark last week, Muslim fanatics were caught conspiring to assassinate a cartoonist. In protest of the conspirators' arrest, and in protest of freedom of expression in general, other Muslim fanatics are committing arson and inciting riots. That can only mean one thing: it's February again.

February 2006, as some readers may recall, marked the launch of the First Cartoon Intifada. The previous fall, the Danish newspaper Politiken ran a brief story about Kare Bluitgen, a children's book author who was trying to write a book about Islam, and found that no illustrator was willing to take on the project, for fear of being slaughtered like Theo van Gogh.

Picking up on the story, Jyllands Posten, another Danish newspaper, printed a series of 12 cartoons, some (but not all!) of which depicted the prophet Muhammad, as a way of satirizing the circumstances under which Danish artists were too fearful forMuhammad cartoons: definitely justify murder their lives to accept payment for kiddie book drawings.

In the following months, Muslim states began pressuring the Danish government to punish the newspaper. To his lasting credit, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen refused to submit to blackmail or compromise his country's fundamental freedoms. At that point, there was no way for humble sheep in the flock of God to let the world know just how much their righteous feelings had been hurt, except by torching the embassies of sovereign states, trampling bystanders to death and forcing artists into hiding.

The open rioting may have died down since then, but God's commandment to murder artists remains quite active, hence the recently uncovered plot to kill septuagenarian cartoonist Kurt Westergaard should hardly come as a surprise. What is surprising, and pleasantly so, is that Western media have not adopted a cowardly defensive crouch. Instead, newspapers across Denmark reprinted the Muhammad cartoons in solidarity with Westergaard.

Last time around, both media and political leaders pre-emptively covered themselves in disgrace. Newspapers all over the world refused to run the cartoons even though they were the focal point of the biggest news story in the world. Bill Clinton saw the occasion as an opportunity to denounce the cartoonists rather than their would-be butchers, decrying "this appalling example in northern Europe, in Denmark…these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam." Franco Fattini, then the E.U. Justice and Security Commissioner, made sure to "give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of free expression." Cardinal Ratzinger's church declared that "the right to freedom of expression does not imply the right to offend religious beliefs."

Just in case there ever is a genuine uprising in the Muslim world against proscribed art, as opposed to a premeditated incitement to violence on the part of theocratic bullies, Ratzinger and his confessional brethren might want to rethink their illiberalism on purely pragmatic grounds. Under the same interpretation of Islamic law that prohibits depictions of Muhammad, graphic representations of Jesus and all other Jewish and Christian prophets who are accepted into the Islamic tradition are utterly forbidden as well. The upshot is that all Catholic churches in the world --- with their stained glass portrayals of the Holy Family, the saints, and scenes from the Bible --- are just as much an offense to Islam as the Danish cartoons. In other words, burning down Danish consular buildings is no more or less justified than burning down the Vatican.

Mutatis mutandis, anyone who does not live under the strictures of Sharia law undoubtedly transgresses it, daily, in countlessly many ways. The question of whether to subject oneself to an ancient inflexible religious code is not a question of showing appropriate respect for the beliefs of others. It's a question of maintaining respect for oneself.

Related: More Jewcy coverage of free speech, censorship, and the Intoonfada from Michael Weiss, Ali Eteraz, and Mr Eugenides.

Y-Love, over at Jewlicious, calls attention to a crazy new trend in the ultra-Orthodox community. A small group of women in Israel, intent on being as uber-modest as possible, have started voluntarily wearing burkas and hijabs. Y-Love links to and quotes from Muqata blog, which has translated part of the Haaretz article about the new fashion move:

Appropriate for Synagogue: and mosque, too.

A group of Ultra-Orthodox chareidi women in Ramat Beit Shemesh have hyperbolated tznius [laws of modesty] to the extreme and now wear burkas whenever they go outside their home. Not advocated by any known rabbi, the burka fad is apparently a radical ultra-Orthodox feminist "invention", and many are wary of this custom being adopted or repudiated. The radical Beit Shemesh tznius patrol is even scratching it's head whether someone managed to out do them, and leave them in the dust with the liberal left.

The husband of one such woman took his wife to Beit Din (religious court) to request from her to remove the burka due to shalom bayit (a peaceful home). The court ordered a religious divorce even though the husband didn't even request one -- because the court found her behaviour to be so bizarre.

Mother in Israel posts some truly unbelievable pictures, and the issue is being discussed everywhere from the Forward’s Bintel Brief to the Lilith blog where Friend of Jewcy Rebecca Honig Friedman writes:

 

They are adopting the ideal of modesty that to some extent has been ingrained in them by male religious authority (and no doubt by female authorities, too), but they are doing so on their own terms. They are taking the power of dictating women’s dress away from the male religious authorities in their community, deciding for themselves what modesty means and, in classic fashion, being persecuted for it.

These women have the right to wear whatever they want, but we should also question the values that have led them to such extreme decisions, and the society that perpetuates those values.

I’ll be the first to admit it: there are days when I would happily put on a burka so as not to have to spend half an hour blow-drying my hair and putting on makeup in order to be presentable. And I think the visceral negative reaction to burkas has more to do with the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan and other Muslim countries than with the burka itself (and anyway, all of the pictures I’ve seen so far are not of women in burkas, they’re of women wearing jilbab). Do I think the women in Ramat Beit Shemesh are going overboard? Absolutely. But though I find it all pretty strange, it’s not as offensive as if they were being told to wear jilbab by their rabbis, which, no doubt, is just round the bend.

Though they often behave like godless heathens, the stars are "just like us," as the old saying goes. They, too, search for divinity and meaning in their lives--a quest that can sometimes lead to trouble. The latest spiritual superstar pitfalls:

• Cruise: he's number 2Madonna has been accused of using her charity, Raising Malawi, as a front to raise funds for the Kabbalah Center. Her reps are calling said accusations "outrageous, incorrect, inaccurate, hurtful and malicious."

• The internet is all a-twitter with rumors of Britney's possible conversion to Islam.

• Soccer star Kaka, Fifa "World Player of the Year," may be in some hot water due to his ties to an apparently corrupt evangelical church.
  

• Andrew Morton, author of the unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise, which paints him as "Scientology’s de facto second in command," is standing by his book despite threats of legal action. It's in bookstores today.

• Better yet, check out Cruise's terrifying Scientology Indoctrination Vid, over at Gawker.

We have some mad makeover shows in Britain.

In You Are What You Eat, "Dr" Gillian McKeith moves in with a morbidly obese couple, pokes around in their poo (literally), and tells them that if they don't stop scoffing chips they will die. In What Not To Wear, two posh women with a penchant for botox claim to be able to improve people's self-esteem—and thus the mental health of the entire nation—by giving them fashion advice. In The Sex Inspectors, a group of "sexperts" watches a couple frolicking late at night and then gives them advice on how to improve their love life.

But these shows seem perfectly sane compared with the maddest makeover series yet: Make Me a Muslim (watch the show at bottom of this page).

This mini-series, which kicked off on Channel 4 this week, features four "MuslimIslamic Eye for the Queer Guy: Channel 4's crack team of Muslims tries to whip various classes of deviant into order mentors" who try to instill Islamic values into a bunch of slovenly Brits. In the first episode, we were introduced to a beer-swilling taxi driver (scum!), a mum and part-time glamour model (slag!), and a gay man with a high-pitched voice who wears pink t-shirts (deviant!), all of whom will be whipped into shape by the pious Islamic lifestyle gurus.

Make Me a Muslim borrows heavily from other makeover shows. It has the snobbish dietary element of You Are What You Eat: on Sunday the Muslim mentors visited the contestants' homes and emptied their fridges of pork and alcohol. And the show is fixated on fashion: One of the Muslim mentors, a bearded imam, took the gay contestant to a clothes store to buy him some "manly clothes." It was like Islamic Eye for the Queer Guy.

The female Muslim mentor encouraged the mum-cum-glamour-model—who normally wears skimpy outfits—to don an ankle-covering, hair-hiding hijab. I sympathised with the glamour model when she complained: "This thing is choking me....I feel I am being oppressed by clothes."

The mentors were disgusted to find that one of the contestants—a feisty blonde— sleeps in the same bed as her partner even though they're not married! They demanded that she decamp to the spare room.

Channel 4 describes the show as a "unique social experiment" in which the mentors try to "rescue" Britons who have no moral values. This got me thinking: we hear a lot about "institutional Islamophobia" these days, where Britain's political and cultural elites allegedly whip up fear of Muslims to justify draconian measures. But what about its twin: institutional Islamophilia, the authorities' bizarre belief that Islamic values might make Britain great again?

Trendy opinion-formers and officials promote Islam as the solution to Britain's moral decline. Earlier this year, Time Out magazine, the bible of "An Islamic London Would Be a Better Place": —Time Out magazine, the bible of London's latte-drinking classesLondon's latte-drinking, theatregoing classes, argued that an "Islamic London would be a better place".

Apparently we'd all be healthier since alcohol would be banned. "Turning all the city's pubs into juice bars would have a massive positive effect on public health", said Time Out. And the capital would be greener, too, because "the Islamic concept of halifa or trusteeship obliges Muslims to look after the natural world". Save the planet and your health: go Islamic now!

Last month London's Evening Standard hosted a debate titled "Is Islam good for London?", in which some participants argued that Islam's "core values" might help to anchor out-of-control Brits. The daft notion that drunken and disrespectful Britons might benefit from a short sharp dose of Islam is becoming widespread. In 2005, six Tory Members of Parliament wrote a letter to the Spectator in which they said that Islamists who describe Britain as decadent are "right". "Whether it is lawlessness, family breakdown, the menace of drugs, binge-drinking, teenage pregnancies or merely the coarse brutishness which has infested British culture... the results of years of woolly-minded liberal thinking are plain to see", they said.

Meanwhile, everyone from London mayor Ken Livingstone to former PM Tony Blair speak of their "deep respect" for Islamic values.

We've ended up with a kind of colonialism-in-reverse. Once, arrogant British elites sought to force their Christian, imperialist values on "the natives", including Muslims, in the Third World; today a bereft and confused British elite hopes that importing some of the natives' culture over here might help to keep unruly Brits in their place.

The terrible irony is that Islamic radicals, the biggest Islamophiles of all, are driven by a stunningly similar fear and loathing of the feckless masses. The Crawley plotters, found guilty of terrorist offences earlier this year, wanted to blow up nightclubs and kill "those slags dancing around." Those who planted car bombs outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in London on ladies' night in June, and crashed car bombs into Glasgow airport during the height of the summer holiday season, also seemed keen to target Britain's "slaggish", hedonistic culture.

These hot-headed extremists fancy themselves as rebels. In fact they're more like the armed wing of Institutional Islamophilia. Where Channel 4 wants to make us into Muslims through makeover shows, violent Islamophiles want to make us into Muslims through fear and terror. Both sides are motivated by a desire to save Britons from their own alleged beastliness.

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You know, just when I write off the Reform movement they come at me with this amazing programming and I have to admit how much they rock. Check out this article from The Washington Post:
Eric Yoffie: suddenly kind of hot

Jews and Muslims Set Up Big Interfaith Effort

By Michelle Boorstein

Two major Jewish and Muslim organizations unveiled an interfaith dialogue curriculum yesterday and are urging their hundreds of thousands of members to use it. Both sides say it is the broadest Jewish-Muslim interfaith effort in the continent's history.

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, North America's largest Jewish movement, announced the partnership with the Islamic Society of North America at his group's biennial convention in San Diego.

"As a once-persecuted minority in countries where anti-Semitism is still a force, we understand the plight of Muslims in North America today," Yoffie said yesterday. "We live in a world in which religion is manipulated to justify the most horrific acts, a world in which -- make no mistake -- Islamic extremists constitute a profound threat. For some, this is a reason to flee from dialogue, but in fact the opposite is true. When we are killing each other in the name of God, sensible religious people have an obligation to do something about it."

This summer Yoffie became the first major Jewish leader to address ISNA, the continent's largest Muslim organization with 30,000 attendants coming to its annual convention. ISNA President Ingrid Mattson will address the 980-congregation Jewish group today, the first leader of a major Muslim group to do so.

The manual and video are built around five sessions that touch on topics including the place of Jerusalem in Jewish and Muslim tradition and history. The toughest potential sticking points will probably be related to Israel and to stereotypes both groups carry about the other, Mark Pelavin, director of interreligious affairs for the Jewish group, said in an interview. "Jews want to know how Muslims feel about terrorism in the name of Islam, and Muslims want to know how Jews feel about Palestinian suffering."

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The amazing thing about this effort is that it’s not one of those lame, ‘we’re not going to talk about Israel we’re just going to talk about how important it is to respect each other’ gigs. Both sides plan on addressing really serious issues. My guess is it won’t be pretty, but I’m SO psyched that they got this going. Now what I want to know is when the Conservative movement going to step up to the plate.

Meanwhile, over at Jewschool there’s a pretty decent breakdown of all the cool things Yoffie has planned for the next year or so. My favorite part is an excerpt from Yoffie’s big sermon on Saturday:

In recent years, there has been a feverish conversation among communal leaders about how to connect young adults to Jewish life. We all agree that they need Torah study, Jewish ritual and connection to Israel. But all of this has not been enough.

Well, here is my suggestion to these leaders about what they need to do next: They need to speak up for justice. They need to speak up loud, proud and unafraid.

Because our young people are very wise. They know that a Judaism that ghettoizes itself has no real mission and therefore no real purpose. They don’t understand how Jews can pray for the sick every day and then do nothing to get health care to those who need it. In the end, if the Judaism we offer our young does not speak to the great moral issues of the world and of their lives, it will fail to capture their imagination or their hearts.

I kind of have a crush on Eric Yoffie now. But don’t worry, I promise not to have meaningless sex with him.

A Turkish lawyer is suing UEFA due to the fact that he feels that Inter Milan's cross bearing shirts were offensive.

This example is a great one to make my basic point: treating Muslims as if they are all connected is going to become very tiresome in light of the fact that there are 1.2 billion of them, and naturally, bound to contain very many complete and utter tools, who are quite often going to do some very stupid things (like this one). Under this lawyer's rationale, the freaking Turkish flag can be deemed to be offensive, since it bears the crescent, a sign of the Ottoman Empire (who weren't exactly peaceful). Actually, come to think of it, the very