TMatt on the NYT fatwa

Over at Get Religion, Terry Mattingly has some very pointed words about the Times' editorial. Excerpt:

And thus it came to pass: The content of Pope Benedict XVI’s speech stopped being the story — including the fact that the speech was an attack on secularism in the West — and the reaction of many Muslim leaders became the story.

That could only lead to one conclusion, in the mandated Unitarian-Universalism of the New York Times editorial-page suite, the holy of holies for the blue-zip code faith. All religious roads have to lead to the top of the same mountain (even if saying that is, itself, an affront to Islam as well as to traditional Christianity). Otherwise, we would have to do basic, balanced, factual journalistic coverage of people on both sides of historic, complicated, emotional, intellectual religious issues. We would have to be journalists.

TMatt indicates that the Times won't be satisfied until Benedict kisses the Koran. Literally or figuratively. The "soft apology" already offered by the Pope won't be enough.