Hitchens on "Free Exercise"

Famed author, journalist and atheist Christopher Hitchens currently between lecture engagements and fighting esophageal cancer writes lucidly and provocatively on a subject ever near his heart - the future of human beings, particularly those of us who claim to love God.

As he sums up the current, growing fiasco known as the "Ground Zero Mosque Debate":

"Those who wish that there would be no mosques in America have already lost the argument: Globalization, no less than the promise of American liberty, mandates that the United States will have a Muslim population of some size. The only question, then, is what kind, or rather kinds, of Islam it will follow. There's an excellent chance of a healthy pluralist outcome, but it's very unlikely that this can happen unless, as with their predecessors on these shores, Muslims are compelled to abandon certain presumptions that are exclusive to themselves. The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization. Those who pretend that we can skip this stage in the present case are deluding themselves and asking for trouble not just in the future but in the immediate present."

Hitchens (left) last night in Birmingham [Photo: Al.com]

Read the rest of Hitchen's important treatise published on Slate here.