I see.
I’ve never heard of him before. Thanks for the heads up.
Discussion of Lilla's article is making its way through the blogs. Here's one example. And here's another. And one more.
Off-hand, it sounds like Lilla is a "generalist" who doesn't have much knowledge of specifics, so he throws together what he does know, even if it doesn't fit.
He wants to find a moderate, reforming Muslim, so he latches on to a name in the news, even though the fellow may not be a very good influence after all.
If you want to say that Lilla's problem is that he's a secular liberal, I won't argue, but I do notice he went through an evangelical phase at one time.
This may be the sort of thing we should be discussing more, so thanks for bringing it up.