To Win Back What We’ve Lost: How Defenders of Religious Freedom Are Fighting to Reclaim International Law
by Benjamin Bull, Public Discourse:
Despite conceding crucial legal and political ground for decades to organizations such as Planned Parenthood, opportunities abound for defenders of religious freedom to gain that ground back.
The last two decades have witnessed a growing clash between European secularism and rising Islamic immigration, which has brought an increasingly aggressive Islamic voice to the politics and culture of the continent. This surge poses a double threat to Christian religious freedom in Europe and North America.
The first threat is that Islamic (Sharia) law restricts the ability of Christians to evangelize or even speak critically on the topic of Islam. The second is that radical secularism’s counteroffensive to Islam proposes to eradicate all religious distinctions in favor of the primacy of the state’s interest in assimilated citizens. This, too, has produced increasing limitations on the free exercise of religion in Europe—including Christian religious freedom.
If either of these versions of intolerance ultimately wins the battle for Europe, American courts will probably give credence to their diminished views of religious freedom. In the United States, we’re already seeing Canada’s version of this clash play out, as that country’s growing statism forces all religious faiths to conform to the lowest common state-sanctioned secular denominator.
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