When you hear about someone leaving Islam, you may imagine it has something to do with religious beliefs. On some technical level it surely does. But I think the reason usually has nothing to do with, say, rational rejection of one of the six pillars of faith. Rather, most people I've known who left Islam did so because they became disillusioned. And nothing causes a Muslim to feel disillusioned about Islam but the bad character of other Muslims.

When I was confined in ADX Florence, the most secure and restrictive prison in the United States, I conducted an eighteen-month long debate with Richard Reid, aka the Shoebomber, through notes we passed between us. Here are some of those notes...

The Islam of the American Muslim community is morphing into a cultural identity whose defining components are not spiritual and moral substance but rather victimhood and resentment of the dominant culture’s “oppression.”