Michael - November 5th, 2007

Perhaps unbeknown to many of the readers of Orson Scott Card (author of the landmark sci-fi series "Ender's Game"), the man is a very sharp and talented conservative/libertarian political writer. In an article in the "Rhino Times" of Greensboro, South Carolina, he takes on a key irony that's been a sticking-point in Western liberal (not "Liberal") thought since at least the Enlightenment: How do you tolerate intolerance? How can you extend respect to different belief systems when at least one of those systems explicitly demands the rejection of all others?

Rather than remain in the lofty abstract and mull this question philosophically, Card expertly analyzes the manifestation of this question in a set of anomalies in our current body of laws, and suggests concrete and realistic things we can do about it.

Surely we can say that the essence of our freedom of religion is that every individual in the United States has the right to change his religion whenever and however he wants.

Except Muslims. Because it is the belief of Muslims throughout the world that it is the duty of good Muslims to kill any Muslim who converts to a different faith. [...] And this religion operates inside the United States, invoking the protection the Constitution provides to religions within its borders.
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So the question is: Does a religion that believes in denying freedom of religion to others deserve the same protection as religions that uphold freedom of religion?
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People of one faith can coexist with people of any other faith as long as they all agree that each has the right to offer membership to anyone who comes to believe their doctrine, and to actively solicit such conversions.

You can hate it when someone converts away – you can hold a funeral for the person who converted. What you can't do is make the funeral literal rather than symbolic.
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Let's suppose that the American government wakes up to the danger of extending the protection of the Constitution to all Muslims. Let's suppose a law was enacted stating that the laws respecting freedom of religion apply only to religions that allow freedom of conversion. If you do not allow any of your members age 18 or older to change religions without loss of life, liberty or property, then you get no protection from the Constitution.

We could go farther, and say because the government has a monopoly on the power (within constitutional limitations) to deprive citizens of life, liberty or property, then any religion that claims such rights, whether or not it can be proven to have acted on that claim, does not qualify as a religion when it comes to constitutional protections.

Nobody will be locked up or thrown out of the country just for being Muslim or believing or preaching Muslim doctrine.

But any Muslim congregation that has not rejected the right-to-kill doctrine must pay full taxes on its property and its members get no tax deduction for their contributions.

And those that actively taught the right to kill could be treated, like the Mormon Church once was, as a subversive organization, to be disincorporated, its property seized and its funds blocked.

Furthermore, the FBI will not be barred from observing and tracking members of congregations that have not rejected the right-to-kill doctrine as if they were members of subversive organizations – since they would be.

However, when such laws are enacted, there would be a grace period of a year in which American Muslim religious communities could join one or more national or regional certifying groups, rather like the various Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and other national sectarian groups or conventions.

All the member congregations would attest that they would not tolerate any teaching of the right-to-kill doctrine in their mosques or among their membership – just the way the Mormon Church had to give up its practice of polygamy and stop teaching it anywhere in the church in order to be legally recognized.

Now, does anybody actually find this to be unreasonable? And if so, how on Earth can you possibly justify your objection? I really wanna hear it.