Taken for a Ride? Islam and Religious Liberty
by William Kilpatrick, Crisis Magazine:
President Erdogan, who is rapidly turning Turkey into a Caliphate, once said that “Democracy is just the train we board to reach our destination.” Is religious liberty also a train that Islamists ride until they reach their stop?
That’s an increasingly urgent question now that mosques are popping up all over the landscape of Europe, Canada, and the U.S. Are the mosque-builders genuinely committed to religious freedom for all, or is religious liberty merely a vehicle for increasing the power of Islam? After all, in those countries where Islam is firmly in power, there is little or no religious liberty for non-Muslims, and the liberty of Muslims themselves is severely restricted. They are not, for instance, free to leave Islam.
What brings this to mind is a 2014 post I came across on the Becket Fund’s website about a dispute over the building of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. There was a great deal of local resistance to the mosque, which culminated in a legal battle resulting in a victory for the Muslim community. The Becket Fund, along with the Department of Justice, stepped in on the side of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty describes itself as “a non-profit, public interest law firm defending the freedom of people of all faiths.” People of faith do owe a lot to the Becket Fund because it has an outstanding record of defending religious liberties. Ninety percent of the time, Becket is on the side of the angels. But its intervention on the side of Islamic societies (there are others besides Murfreesboro) is problematic. The problem is that as mosques multiply, the religious freedom of everyone else begins to erode.
In Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Kuwait, Egypt, and other Muslim countries, the rights of Christians and other religious minorities are strictly curtailed. In Saudi Arabia, churches are simply not allowed. Islamic intolerance of other faiths—especially Judaism—is now spreading into Europe. As Muslims stream into the Continent, Jews are leaving in droves. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, recently asked:
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