I'll take the question mark off Katherine Kersten's "Shariah in Minnesota?" column in the Wall Street Journal to highlight this eye-popping paragraph in Curt Brown's page one Star Tribune article:

Minneapolis Community and Technical College is poised to become the state's first public school to install a foot-washing basin to help the school's 500 Muslim students perform pre-prayer rituals. "We want to be welcoming," MCTC President Phil Davis said, noting a student was hurt trying to wash in a regular sink.

Brown doesn't pause to reveal the nature of the injury sustained by the Muslim student hoisting his foot into the sink. I should think that would make an interesting sidebar all by itself. Where is a reporter's curiosity when you need it?

The Star Tribune can get unusually exercised about church/state separation. I doubt that the merger of mosque and state will even be pointed out as such -- Brown notes it as a "sign of accommodation" -- let alone raise any alarms on the editorial page. Indeed, if they take notice, I think the editors will celebrate it in the spirit of Brown's description of it as an "accommodation."

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