...By painting its picture with such a broad brush, the anti-Semitism watchdog group lent its bully pulpit to the administration and its most partisan cheerleaders. Claiming that the tax protest "tea parties," town-hall-meeting dissenters, and Glenn Beck's broadcast broadsides are part of a structure that is threatening democracy or giving rise to anti-Semitism is absurd, but it does serve the partisan interests of the Left. That is not the proper function of the ADL.

The European media are crowded with editorials condemning the Swiss for voting to prohibit the construction of any more minarets in their country. Here in Norway, the newspaper Dagsavisen went furthest of all, devoting its entire front page on Monday to a comparison of the entire nation of Switzerland with Nazi brownshirts. The front-page illustration did not admit to misinterpretation: the Swiss were Nazis, period.

Virtually all of the media went on autopilot in their abuse of the Swiss. What is at issue is the supposedly "sacred" freedom of religion, which has become an icon especially among left-wing intellectuals and the European niceness industry as a whole. But hold it for one second: As far as I've noticed, no major commentator or intellectual who has blasted Switzerland for this plebiscite has taken into account Islam's political content. Can anyone in my own country of Norway, for example, point to a single -- I repeat, a single -- Muslim congregation within our borders that is secular? That is, a single congregation that rejects sharia and Islam's political ambitions?

In any event, thanks to the Swiss minaret vote, Islam and Christianity are yet again being brought together in a forced marriage. A minaret, we keep being told, is just like a church spire. Nothing new there: When it comes to Islam, the editorialists, columnists, and talking heads simply can't or won't face reality. These "decent" people are appalled by the Swiss people's rejection of minarets -- period. Yes, I'll be the first to admit that the case is a disagreeable one -- but if so, it's because Islam is itself disagreeable. To put it bluntly, a mosque with minarets is not the equivalent of a church with a spire. Why? Because Europe's churches have no political agenda, and because they aren't obsessed with the painstaking study of ancient "divine" laws that are consistently placed above secular law.

It is precisely this disagreeable aspect of Islam, in contrast with Christianity, that I think we would profit by discussing openly and honestly. Because if I could be sure that a Muslim congregation (with or without its own minaret, even though the minaret adds an extra dose of religio-political power) was founded on the same freedom-based values as, say, the Norwegian state church, and that any "struggle" involving that community was limited to arguments about things like same-sex marriage and whether Muhammed was born of a virgin, they could build as many minarets in my neighborhood as they wanted -  because in that case Islam would not represent a challenge to Norwegian liberty and democracy. But unfortunately Islam does represent a challenge. Therefore I pose this challenge to the elite of my country: Of the over 100 Muslim congregations in Norway, name one that will forever fight tooth and nail against sharia and for a secular Norway. If such a faith community exists, it's doing a very good job of keeping itself hidden...