EDITORIAL: Muslim Americans try to build bridges

'Islamophobia is now as American as apple pie," declared a Canadian newspaper column this week. Can this be true? For tens of millions of Americans whose ancestors found a home for their own religions and customs in the United States, ostracizing an entire religion would amount to a defeat.

In this atmosphere of hostility, a plan by New York-area Muslims to open their houses of worship in late October requires extra courage. Long Island mosques should join them, and non-Muslims should attend. Neighbor to neighbor is how Americans have resolved fear and antipathy for each wave of strangers.

Muslims are not new to this country, but their religion is now in focus, for obvious reasons. Though it was terrorists who committed the 9/11 attacks, for nine years those acts have raised questions for some about whether Islam can be a fundamentally moderate faith. Americans value tolerance and pluralism, but we can't be naïve about the tensions around Islam. Is the burqa a religious expression or a form of feminine oppression? Why do dissidents and critics of the faith live under the threat of death? American Muslims are wise to open their doors to such questions.

Hope can arrive in the form of moderates speaking out against the extremes. Conservative Christian leaders have condemned a threat to burn the Quran. A Muslim official in Seattle has called on his community to stand by a cartoonist whose life was threatened. New York can further the construction of such bridges at mosques next month. hN