I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, TO READ THIS:

When he brought these incidents to the attention of police, they requested–and he granted–permission to tap his home phone. UCLA installed a red panic button next to his desk, ensuring that campus cops could respond within minutes to any crisis in his office. The FBI even assigned an agent to track down his tormenters. (To date, they have not been found.) All of this might sound like the prelude to a textbook hate crime, but the Abou El Fadl case has a twist: The callers weren’t angry white men accusing him of terrorist sympathies; they were fellow Muslim Americans accusing him of selling out the faith.

If you can’t safely espouse a liberal Islam in the United States, where, exactly, can we expect it to catch on?