Yes, it’s Tony Blair when asked whether he prayed with George Bush when he vis­ited the White House. A quick quip. What did he mean by this answer? No he and George W. don’t share reli­gious prac­tise, or is it simply not in his brief to dis­cuss his reli­gious views. In the US for bet­ter or worse, reli­gion is sud­denly *very* pub­licly avowed. Whether this reli­gion is one of pub­lic appear­ance or whether it is a deeply held belief, they cer­tainly *do* some­thing pro­fess­ing to be God in the US these days.
I was was intrigued by an art­icle car­ried in the Toronto Star today claim­ing that ‘Islamo­pho­bia’ makes integ­ra­tion tough for the continent’s 15 mil­lion Muslims. Inter­est­ing thought. What I find most fas­cin­at­ing is the charge that Europe has become a vast sea of sec­u­lar­ism and that the US is in fact a more hos­pit­able host to muslim immig­rants. Is racism more endemic in europe than in North Amer­ica? Is this a phe­nomenon stem­ming from the French Revolu­tion? Inter­est­ing points to pon­der.