"One of the most influential books for me in trying to understand how the American system has operated in relation to “religious freedom” is Winnifred Fallers Sullivan’s The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. A lawyer, she recounts how the legal framework of balancing religious freedom and the conformity to law expected by the state arose in the United States in the context of a particular Protestant confessional framework. More precisely, the exact purview of religion was delimited in such a way as to be congenial with the cultural expectations of Anglo-American Protestantism, and what that implied as to the shape of what a “religion” was. Religious traditions in earlier centuries which did not conform to these outlines were subject to cultural censure, or even repression (for example, see Catholicism and American Freedom: A History)." - Maitani

by Razib Khan, one of my favourite writers on the internet - Maitani

"I am a Bangladeshi atheist" http://www.unz.com/gnxp... - Maitani

"I think organized Islamism is atavistic in only a rhetorical sense. The reality is that it is a feature of modernity, or at least a reaction to modernity." - Maitani

"To me a measure of the worth of a society is its ability to tolerate heretics. That is why I sympathize with the ancient Hellenists, and not the waxing homogeneity of Christendom über alles." - Maitani