[Revolting cat!]

"If we allow them to cover their heads," says a retired psychotherapist -- a woman who would not look out of place in Manhattan -- "one day we will all have to cover ours."

This is the phrase that struck me. The Turks seem to have the right idea: don't tolerate intolerance, whereas we Americans go blindly tolerating everything until intolerance becomes soup du jour the way the intolerance of political correctness has become. Just ask the Boy Scouts of America. Just ask the Young Republicans on college campuses.

[hinckley buzzard]

Regarding this sort of orthodoxy issue, Father Richard John Neuhaus says "Whatever is not proscribed will someday be mandatory." Seems he has company in this view.

[XBob]

We are a country where idealistically, government rules flow from the people up to the government. We are used to this. The muslims are used to being directed, and rules flow down to the people from either their muslim cleric or their 'Phaero'.

In 1994, while I was living in Egypt, Mubarik wanted to help reform Egyptian schools, and make them more secular, and he banned the wearing of scarves by girls in school. He had a hard fight of it, to get them to stop wearing the scarves, but I think he won (haven't checked lately). However, because of this type of vision, the fundamentalists keep trying to blow him up, and you will find most of the women in the streets of Cairo in western wear.

However, they are just changing the name of McDonalds (first one opened in Cairo also in 1994) to Man Foods, to 'un-associate' the chain with America. So, I think he is losing the battle for freedom and westernization.