The Reality of Pluralism

Where is North America's oldest Islamic mosque? Not in New York or Chicago, but in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In the middle of middle America, in a part of the county where baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, Mother and other things quintessential American remain as important as ever, Muslim immigrants in 1934 built their first North American place of worship. Fewer than sixty years after the first was built, there are six hundred mosques in the U.S. As one of those Muslims Iowens, Mohammad Kahn, understates the matter, "It shows there here in a small place in Iowa, in a place practically nobody knows about, we have made a lot of progress, and that this nation has changed in a few years." Let's embrace this diversity and not call ourselves a "Christian nation." The only "Christian nation" is the Kingdom of God and last I checked its not placed within geographical boundaries.

In other related news, David Lee Roth is training to save lives in New York City. I wonder if the roadies have to set up the defibulator machine before he uses it. "Check. Check. Check one. Sivalance. Sivalance."