I live in Harlem on a street that is home to three churches and a mosque. The mosque is next door to one of those churches and when male congregants mingle on the sidewalk, it’s impossible to tell who had just been in church and who in the mosque. It’s only some of the women’s headscarves that tell you.

As my flight approached America last weekend, my mind circled back to the furor that has broken out over plans to build Cordoba House, a community center in Lower Manhattan.

Hasn't the whole notion of shariah in America gotten a bit out of control? No, it hasn't -- it's gotten hugely, obscenely, ignorantly out of control. How many of those anti-Islam protesters holding "NO SHARIA LAW" signs (as if anyone were advocating shariah law in the U.S.) actually know what the word means? I'd say, oh, none. Roughly.

When the planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, I was living in Seattle, on the other side of America. My brother and his wife were visiting me. We did not leave the house for two days because we were worried that Americans angry at Muslims would attack my sister-in-law, who wore a hijab.

Muslims are a very diverse people. Although they share timeless universals that weave them together into a common fabric, it would be dishonest to paint them with a broad brush.

This is the way the Muslim calendar works: because it’s lunar, it slips back about 11 days each Gregorian year. Lunar months are 29 or 30 days (years are 354 or 355 days). So every 33-odd Gregorian years, the Muslim calendar makes a full pilgrimage through the seasons.

Harsh criticisms of Islam and Muslims are becoming increasingly common in Western media, but one area they continue to command respect is in the financial sector, especially among Austrian economists.