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Andrew writes:
I realize, after reading countless emails on the matter, that the real source of offense is my equating Islam and Christianity as interchangeable religious beliefs, for the purposes of politics. I see them as potentially equally threatening to freedom.While that may be true, one has also to be aware that there are quite a few who would use the presence of Christianism - broadly put, i.e. as its adherents, its milieu, its legislative agenda, its influence on the polity - as a means to stall external pressure for various countries to work diligently to mitigate the Islamist advance, at least insofar as it relates to militant Islam, violent overthrow, etc.
Therefore, one has to cage one's critique, it seems to me, in terms that face both the enemy in front of us and the one behind us. This requires nuance, perhaps.
There is no freedom I would not grant a Christianist or Islamist in the exercize of his religious faith; but there are plenty of freedoms that he would seek to deny me in the simple living of my life.I think we would part ways on that. I believe in time and place restrictions on religious exercise, but not "bans" or abject injunctions, precisely because the jihadis seek to discredit secularism by its handling of such nettlesome issues (i.e. the approach is generally to provoke a response that can be characterized as an "insult to Islam", "repression of faith", etc.). It is only in this way that the pluralistic, liberal state shows both consideration for the individual and also for the broader truths of how people come together in one polity, through civil society.
In other words, I think there is a strong case to be made that, on some things usually not of the State's choosing but of the radical choosing, a secular State winds up having to show a primacy of a kind (usually in a circumscribing of a religious expression), but it has to be handled in a way to re-enforce the importance of plural values without being abject effrontery or condescension.
sullylink
