Tolerance

It is funny that a day after I read Al Ain Taxi's post on Tolerance I saw these two stories:

Khalifa has ensured UAE is a tolerant society - While I don't buy everything said at this conference (for example, I think saying that the UAE has had a "unique human coexistence among the nations of the world", specifically the "unique" part, is going a bit far), there were a lot of good points made. I especially liked the report of the president's statement that "the relationship between [Islam and the West] should be complementary and interactive".

Just before I saw this article, I had seen this one at Slate, a discusion of a new book called American Islam. One of the commenters, an American Muslim, says this about the much more successful integration of Muslims into American life, as opposed to the situation in Europe:

Finally, as a Muslim who lives in the United States and who has spent a great deal of time among Muslims in Europe, I can tell you that, more than anything else, it is the core American belief that faith has a role to play in the public realm that has allowed American Muslims to so seamlessly reconcile their faiths, cultures, and traditions with the realities of American life. Say what you will, this is not, nor has it ever been, a "secular" country. It is, in fact, the most religiously diverse and religiously tolerant nation in the world. In no other country—and certainly no Islamic country—can Muslims pursue their faith and practice in whatever way they see fit than in the United States. It is, in short, America itself that has made American Muslims so much more resistant to the pull of jihadism than their European counterparts.