A reader writes:
The reason elite opinion makers are reticent to too strongly overplay the religion card with Nidal Hasan, in a way they maybe weren't as reticent to do with George Tiller, is because Islam is a minority faith and many of its practitioners might well be subject to retaliatory violence in the wake of Fort Hood. To "apply the same standard of inquiry and criticism to all religions" omits the important fact that there are a great many people in this country who would NOT apply the same standard to Hasan as they applied to George Tiller. They might say that Tiller was a bad apple in an otherwise good faith, while simultaneously saying Hasan is the apple that proves the badness of the whole batch. To pretend otherwise is obvious and repugnant sophistry.