Amer­i­ca, as a nation, has some big fish to fry these days. But the ener­gy is being focused right now on a sym­bol­ic ques­tion. Can the nation tol­er­ate the build­ing of an Islam­ic cul­tur­al cen­ter and mosque near Ground Zero almost a decade after the 9/11 attacks? Or, more to the point, can Amer­i­ca uphold one of its core val­ues – reli­gious tol­er­ance? The debate has smol­dered on through­out the sum­mer, and we’ve seen the hard right and left con­demn the Cor­do­ba Ini­tia­tive and Islam more gen­er­al­ly. On the right, Newt Gin­grich has talked about  how we’re fac­ing an “Islamist cul­tur­al-polit­i­cal offen­sive designed to under­mine and destroy our civ­i­liza­tion.” And built into his think­ing is the assump­tion that when Chris­tians com­mit abhor­rent crimes, it’s a per­ver­sion of the reli­gion, not an indict­ment of its essence. But the same char­i­ty  does­n’t get extend­ed to the Islam­ic minor­i­ty faith in the coun­try. Mean­while, Sam Har­ris on the secular/atheist left gets in bed with Gin­grich when he says “there is much that is objectionable—and, frankly, terrifying—about the reli­gion of Islam and about the state of dis­course among Mus­lims liv­ing in the West.” If it mat­ters, the main dif­fer­ence between Har­ris and Gin­grich is Har­ris’ con­sis­ten­cy, which boils down to a con­sis­tent con­tempt for reli­gion. (Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life takes a much clos­er look at Har­ris’ argu­ments here).

All of this makes me won­der: What would some­one who actu­al­ly knows some­thing about Islam say about the whole affair? So here you have it. Karen Arm­strong, one of the most well known thinkers in the field of com­par­a­tive reli­gion, a for­mer Catholic nun, and the author most recent­ly of The Case for God, offer­ing her thoughts on the mat­ter above.