Is Columnist Ross Douthat Jewish?

No, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is not a Jew. He currently is a Catholic.

Wikipedia reports, "As an adolescent Douthat converted to Pentecostalism and then, with the rest of his family, to Catholicism."

Perhaps his next stage will be to convert to Judaism. Apparently not to Islam, judging from his thinly veiled bias in his latest op-ed in the Times. (Why did the Times need to replace Bill Kristol with yet another "conservative voice on the Times editorial page"?)

Right now it's a good thing Ross is not a Jew. Because for Ross Douthat to, "Integrate fully into our national life," he's much better off not being a Jew.

His column, "Islam in Two Americas," presents a strangely contrived binary dichotomy of two segments of our population. One is pluralistic, diverse and tolerant, the other is monistic, unitary and intolerant.

Obviously this guy needs to get out of his study some more. Any four year old knows that American society and culture is way more complex than the either-or world that he portrays.

Basic Talmudic analysis 101: Who divides the world into binary pairs of us and them? Often its the polemical starting point of the triumphalists and bigots, who think and want to say, Hey, they are not like us. Let's hate them, chase them away, or kill them.

Ross is not a Jew. If he was, he might get it that reduction to the binary can be (and has been) the first step to the final solution.

He's on the road, as his conclusion shows, to solving the Muslim problem in America, "For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need... And they'll need..." It's not "we" - it's "they." And Ross knows what's best.

Oh yes, and if "they" don't do what Ross says, then what?