Theological work to be done, but by whom?

Between the ISIS-linked terror attacks in Paris and California and the strident, often xenophobic responses on the campaign trail and elsewhere, it is a difficult time to talk rationally about Islam in America. Fantastical stories abound, and come dangerously close to the mainstream: President Obama is importing 250,000 Syrian refugees (his actual plan is for 10,000); there are Muslim terrorist training camps around the country; Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is a stalking-horse for the Muslim Brotherhood. Quite predictably, these outlandish claims have been paralleled by mob violence against Muslims, from attacks on mosques to assaults on women in hijabs. 

In this Sunday's column, Ross Douthat looks at the polls on Americans and Islam and sees a problem. While most Americans disagree with Donald Trump that our borders should be closed to all Muslims, majorities in recent soundings believe that Islam is incompatible with American values and hold an unfavorable view of the religion. Writing at a safe remove from the fever swamps and the hate crimes—without, in fact, even mentioning them—Douthat argues that pious Muslims must inevitably face conflict between the “lure of conquest, the pull of violent jihad” and the ambiguous, unsettled place of traditional religion in a secularizing culture.

Perhaps, Douthat muses, Muslims might adopt a position analogous to American evangelicals: missionary and scriptural, but peaceably assimilated into “the liberal democratic West.” But for Islam to do this, he warns portentiously, “it has to set aside the sword.”