I wonder how American Muslims would be treated if they adopted the practice of cross burning. Actually, for some Muslim fundamentalists, cross burning would be one of their more moderate religious expressions. American liberals are taking an increasingly tolerant view of Muslim pietism. Only recently did authorities in Minneapolis act against Muslim taxi drivers who booted passengers from their vehicles rather than allow the infidels to stop off at a local liquor store to pick up some firewater.
So possibly I am wrong. Possibly our liberals will allow American Muslims to don flowing robes and masks, at least during a cross burning at Friday prayers. You know that our liberals would go along with the recent fatwa of the Egyptian cleric Ezzat Attiya, who endeavored to allow unmarried men and women to work together in a modern workplace by ruling that if the men breastfed from their female co-workers, working together would be A-OK. Breast-feeding, according to Islamic law, establishes a maternal relationship. Thus the male worker who nursed from his colleague would not be suspected of coveting her or having any sort of adulterous relationship whatsoever. Perhaps they could even engage in ballroom dancing after hours.
If all this sounds faintly absurd, it is meant to. The response of Western democracies to the excesses of fundamentalist Islam is approaching the absurd. There is, in our free societies, abundant precedent for limiting provocative behavior. Unfortunately, many of our liberals are susceptible to the complaints of those who hate us. They were susceptible to communists and in the 1930s they were even susceptible to Nazis. It is my hope that the British authorities will ban the niqab and return to a celebration of the miniskirt. I personally admire a woman who has nothing to hide.