There’s a very sobering article by Elaine Sciolino in today’s New York Times. It seems that Islamic clerics held an election to select representatives to France’s first national council of Muslims. A number of mosques (presumably the more radical ones) declined to participate in the election, and it was assumed that moderates would dominate. Instead, a radical fundamentalist party that seeks to establish Islamic law took about a third of the seats, and the most moderate party, which had been expected to dominate the council, took only half as many seats as the Islamists. (Other groups, between the moderates and the radicals, took the balance of the seats.)