The Guardian has a good story today about the numerous death threats being received by Turkish writers who dare to challenge the nationalist myths of the country, including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. I’m used to hearing of similar death threats being made in places like Bangladesh and Pakistan, but this is quite different in that the extremist ideology is question is Turkish nationalism rather than the more familiar Islamist religious ideology.

Last night out and about town with the girls, I ran in a Christian pastor out to save souls. He was, of course, concerned for us. I replied for myself, "Oh thanks, I'm saved. It's cool."

He smiled thinking I might also be washed in the blood, as it were. My friend corrected him, "Oh no! She's a Muslim."

The Pastor's face became still. He then confronted me with what must surely be the most devastating challenges to Islam ever heard by a highly educated woman with no patience for missionaries. He told me about the 6 camels a Muslim he knew had to pay to marry his wife. He told me this person had to convert for the marriage and was made to denounce Jesus. Sadly, he said, the man denounced Jesus only to marry "the maid."  "Terrorism" was his next devastating point of attack.

Thabet, of Towards God Is Our Journey, an engineer who (somehow) is not living in a state of Manichean Duality, offers an incredibly rich essay on the state of British Muslims and Western Muslims. Just one excerpt:

In instances where unfair anti-Western attitudes are expressed, whether by my friends or people I meet who wish to express their opinions to me, I feel it is important for me to challenge attitudes which reduce all Western political, philosophical and humanist traditions to a few crude, negative, adjectives and dismiss all the output from Europe and its historical outposts as 'frivolous'. I think any Western Muslim should do this. They should also challenge certain myths which still circulate amongst Muslims here. One, in particular, is of a more moral and spiritual Islamic East, compared to an immoral or decedant secular West. Yet, I know literally dozens of Muslims (one a very good friend of mine) who left to live in Muslim countries in the hope of living their 'Islamic dream'. My friend, along with some acquaintances, have all return to Britain, disappointed with what they experienced (bigotry, racial and even religious discrimination, incompetence). This veil has surely been lifted from our eyes by now. None of my comments, of course, suggest that anything deemed 'Western' is sacroscent or off limits to valid, powerful and stinging criticism. Instead what I'm saying is that just as Muslims complain that Islamic traditions is reduced to a set of negative stereotypes, then similarly Western traditions suffer the same fate, even amongst Western Muslims. This is disappointing and borne out to some degree by the results from the recent Pew Global Attitude Project. We should be Western Muslims in the fullest sense: intellectually, morally, politically, physically and so on. That, or we hide and remain fearful that the horrors of the Holocaust are visited upon us.