Chicago -- In "U.S. will survive one hand on Koran" (Commentary, Dec. 13), columnist Kathleen Parker opted to endorse Dennis Prager, a popular talk-show host and columnist, who has widely been identified from all sides as intolerant and a bigot. According to Parker, expressing your faith, if you are Muslim, is "probable cause to infer" that you are out to make one statement or another.

This, of course, is a most disingenuous argument.

For Muslims no less than for anyone else, expressing your faith should be taken as no more than, well, expressing your faith. Her selectiveness and aggressive hyperbole, framed in folksy phrases like "traditional values" and "American solidarity," barely conceal her ideological hostility.

It is hard to understand why there is a growing editorial tendency toward willful ignorance and Islamophobic extremism. It is growing at the expense of intellectual honesty and moral reason.

Not that a columnist should not have an opinion, but when opinion morphs into overt hate-mongering and dualist propaganda, then editors have the responsibility to prevent the incitement spewed by fringe agitators.

Simply put: Hate breeds hate.

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