NPR'S MUSLIM PROBLEM AND OURS:

Sheikhs on a Plane: Don't fire people for confessing fear of Muslims. (William Saletan, Oct. 25, 2010, Slate)

O'Reilly, Williams, and another guest went on to have an extended conversation about Islamic terrorism and Islamophobia. Williams argued that the problem is extremism rather than Islam, that we aren't at war with a religion, that it would be wrong to generalize about Christians from Christian terrorism, and that anti-Muslim rhetoric might encourage anti-Muslim violence. O'Reilly replied that "we are smart enough to understand who the good Muslims are and who the bad Muslims are." But he chafed at the suggestion that he shouldn't associate Islam with terrorism: "I'm not going to say, 'Oh, it's only a few, it's only a tiny bit.' It's not, Juan. It's whole nations: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, whole nations."

The O'Reilly-Williams conversation wasn't just a TV shouting match. It's the conversation many Americans have been having with each other and in their own heads since 9/11. Islamic terrorism is real. Jihad is a global threat. The people who killed us on 9/11 were Muslims. Yet we know there are many good Muslims, and we don't want a war with them, nor do we want violence against minorities in our country. We're a nation of immigrants. Our Constitution respects religious freedom. We want to be fair. But some of us are angry. And sometimes, we're afraid.

Today, many liberals are celebrating NPR's decision to fire Williams over his comments on O'Reilly's show. They equate his confession of fear with bigotry. They're making a terrible mistake. Bigotry is when you treat others as members of a group rather than as individuals. It's when you let your fear run your life. Acknowledging your fear, while at the same time recognizing its irrationality and danger, isn't how you succumb to bigotry. It's how you transcend it.

Americans' discomfort with Islam will take decades to dissolve. The task before us today is more urgent: to separate discomfort from discrimination. Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and many other politicians think the former justifies the latter. In the words of Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, the "anguish" of the 9/11 families "entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted." From this, the ADL concludes that "building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain—unnecessarily—and that is not right."

But pain doesn't settle what's right.