Wow. That was eloquent. I'm glad you told us that. Please let us here more of your opinions. Really, we all want to hear what you think.

What's the matter, tough guy? Can't handle a little sarcasm?

No, I didn't answer your questions. I wasn't engaging you. I was mocking you. Jesus, you're stupid.

...would be to require people to post their name to their letter (or, failing that, at least a consistent pseudonym), and to also have a regular publication of the most thoughtful and interesting letters of the week.

Starring your favorites is good acknowledgement, and helpful for the reader, but unfortunately, the starred "editors' choice" letters are often lost amid the sea of more mediocre ones. Periodically spotlighting the best - like you used to do, before the open letters format - would address this.

Being a liberal involves standing up to both the religious bullys who seek to impose their faith on others, and standing up to the non-religious bullys who seek to harass people for peacefully practicing their faith. I think most liberals do a pretty good job of telling the difference.

Here in America, Fundamentalist Christianity is the bully religion, not Islam. American Muslims are more likely to be victims of non-religious bullys than to be the bullys themselves. Liberals are right to stand up for them.

As for the bullying forms of Islam that have emerged in the middle east, I have yet to see evidence of any kind of broad left wing support for these regimes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody has rallied in support of the Taliban. Opposition to the war has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with human rights and international law. In fact, one of the major left wing criticisms of the war is that we effectively are replacing a secular regime with a theocratic one.

For all of the ink that has been spilled on this subject, I have yet to see the comments in question. Can someone quote them for me?

We live in a world of billions and billions of people. Lots of these people do REALLY bad things. This happens all over the world, in every religion, region, and culture.

Thus, when framing your argument, YOU MUST DO SOMETHING MORE that simply point out that something really bad happened once (or twice, or 200 times, for that matter), and that a Muslim did it. You must either (a) use reputable statistics, presented in context, in comparison with other, equally reputable statistics, or (b) refute the central premise of your adversary.

Yes, we all know that there are bad Muslims in the world. This is not enough to fully and completely condemn the worlds second largest religion.

Christianity was for hundreds of years intertwined in politics and culture in ways that were inimical to what we now know as western liberalism, and yet it became untwined. Were it to ever become fully intertwined in politics again, I assure you that it would be just as horrific as anything the Muslim world has to offer. The problem you have identified here is not Islam, it is Theocracy.

The very point that Tariq Ramadan was making in this interview was that it is possible to separate Islam as a religion from the fundamentalist Muslim political ideology (page 3, 1st question), and that the former can, and does, fit within the parameters of secular western pluralism. I don't understand why you took this opportunity to attack him.

The five pillars of Islam, as I understand them, are (1) a proclamation of faith; (2) prayer 5 times a day; (3) giving alms to the poor; (4) fasting during Ramadan; and (5) if possible, making a pilgrimage to Mecca at some point in your life. This is the core of Islam. The rest is all a matter of interpretation, and the history of Islam bears witness to the many ways that the Koran, like all other inspired scriptures in the world, can be interpreted. Islam is rotten to the core? What among these five pillars is rotten?