Many Americans would be happy to wake up tomorrow, and discover an Islamic center was not going to be built near Ground Zero and that they would not have to hear of another pastor planning to burn Qurans.
The decisions would be popular, justified in part by a desire to preserve public order and to reduce potential violence.
But if they were coerced they also would be dangerous.
Take away religious freedoms and violent religious persecution and conflict are likely to increase, Brian Grim of the Pew Research Center and Roger Finke of Pennsylvania State University point out in their upcoming book from Cambridge University Press, The Price of Freedom Denied.
In analyzing U.S. State Department International Religious Freedom Reports for 143 countries outside the United States with a population of at least 2 million, researchers found 86 percent of the nations have documented cases of people being physically abused or displaced from their homes because of religious persecution.
The more severe the levels of religious restriction, the greater the risk of violent persecution, the authors found. Forty-four percent of governments interfering with the right to worship had more than 200 cases of violent religious persecution; only 9 percent of countries with freedom of worship had similar rates of abuse.
The price of freedom, religious liberty scholars suggest, sometimes requires allowing the building of a mosque near the spot where terrorists motivated by Islam committed mass murder or permitting the public burning of holy books.
"We don't have a law against offending anyone's sensibilities," said political scientist Anthony Gill of the University of Washington. "This is just the messiness of democracy."
It could happen here
The United States is no exception to either religious discrimination or the temptation to withhold religious freedoms.
In their book, Grim and Finke provide several examples why religious freedoms cannot be taken for granted here. Consider the following:
- Judicial rulings such as a 1990 Supreme Court decision making it easier for governments to restrict religion can have a major impact. The percentage of favorable decisions on First Amendment cases involving religion dropped from 40 percent to 28 percent in the period between the decision and the passage in 1993 of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The number of free exercise claims also dropped dramatically, from 7.1 cases initiated a month to 3.2 cases a month after the ruling.
-Hate crimes motivated by a religious bias have been reported to the FBI in nearly all 50 states for every year in the 21st century. In 2006, there were documented reports of one person being killed, 178 assaulted and 718 properties damaged or destroyed due to religious bias.
- Public opinion can be fickle. A 2000 survey by the First Amendment center found nearly 73 percent of Americans said the freedom to worship applies to all religious groups regardless of how extreme their beliefs are. In a 2007 survey, just 56 percent were as supportive.
More recently, the controversy over the New York mosque has brought to light several cases around the country where zoning restrictions and public pressures are being used to prevent new mosques from going up.
What is less well known is that Muslim groups are only a small fraction of the groups affected by zoning battles. The great majority are Christian congregations facing local governments bowing to pressures from Not In My Backyard groups of neighborhood residents or a desire to keep limited open land on the tax rolls.
"This is widespread across all denominations," Gill said. "It affects everybody."
'Your freedom is my freedom'
The truth, Grim and Finke note throughout their book, is that religious freedom can be inconvenient.
Neighbors don't want increased traffic on Sunday morning. Majority religions are tempted to limit competition and strengthen themselves by seeking favored status. Governments contemplate the strife committed in the name of religion, and see restrictions as a way to protect the public good.
Yet it is the act of restricting religion, not the presence of diverse groups of faiths, that most likely leads to religious persecution and violence, Grim and Finke maintain.
Religious freedom, Grim and Finke state, serves to reduce conflict, in part by decreasing public tolerance for vigilantism against less popular groups and guarding against the "tyranny of the majority." Minority religious groups also have fewer grievances that potentially fuel violence.
And, as illustrated by the pervasive religious zoning battles today and the 1990 Supreme Court decision in a case involving Native American religion that ended up having a chilling effect on religious liberty, all faith groups have a stake in protecting religious freedom, scholars say.
"The clear message is that even though religious freedoms are inconvenient, they're the very thing that diffuses religious tensions," Finke said. "Their religious freedoms are my religious freedoms."
David Briggs writes the Ahead of the Trend column for the Association of Religion Data Archives.
Jesse Larner: The "Ground Zero Mosque" and the War on Terror
Park51 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3 Reasons the Ground Zero Mosque Debate Makes No Sense | Cracked.com
Matt Sledge: Just How Far Is the "Ground Zero Mosque" From Ground ...
Ground Zero mosque debate swirls in world capitals - CSMonitor.com
'Ground Zero Mosque' Park51 Not a Triumph of Radical Islam - TIME
--John Adams
http://www.isoc.ws/audiouploads/recording.mp3
...All THAT being said: I think liberalism is a good means by which to curtail this tendency, since respect for the rule of law is having so much trouble. And yes, creating an environment where different faiths can intermingle with each other (AND secularism) is an excellent means by which to achieve this. So yes: religious freedom will lead to less religious conflict, especially long term... but only so long as we stay focused on the church/state divide.
The very instant that we, as a nation, start telling people that which they can and cannot believe, we become that which we should stand most against. I served in this nation's military for two main reasons; (a) I wanted to be a part of a great force for peace and good in this world and (b) I wanted to be a part of the force which allows this country the right to be so diverse.
Unfortunately, I'm fairly jaded about those ideals I had then and the military's place in upholding them.
Instead of pointing to the military as this amazing thing that helps maintain us strong, secular, peace loving and diverse- the military is used as a rallying cry by those who seem to hate the very ideals this country was founded on, what the military was founded to protect.
We are succeeding as a nation when the voices for tolerance are louder and clearer than the voices for divisiveness. When we applaud the building of temples to a god that we do not worship. When the common man defends the right of his neighbour to believe in that which he does not. Then, as a country, we are winning.
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself. - Thomas Paine
Best wishes on this election eve from a fellow citizen who wishes for a more peaceful, compassionate and tolerant world.
Cause if it was , I gotta say. In one's religion he may drink, smoke or snort anything he wants to. He has that Constitutional right. But he doesn't have the Constitutional right to operate heavy machinery over me 'after ' he partakes of it. I really don't know the particulars of that case, but "protected" drugs don't belong in the workplace.
Your right to be angry stops at the other man's nose.
Your right to a god stops at my child's classroom (before there really, the whole school is off-limits).
Your right to be drunk stops before you drive (or do any of the other brilliantly dumb things inebriated people do).
The same line of thinking is pretty much what I use to figure out how I feel about the 'rightness' or morality of any act.
In Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, the court actually found against Smith. It's a rather interesting case and wiki has a pretty good write up if you're interested.
At any rate you're right His rights stop when I'm in danger.
“Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt”
Robert Green Ingersoll
That means you have the right to exercise YOUR religion and I have the right to exercise MY religion or NONE AT ALL.
As a result, the only way freedom OF religion can be ensured is when freedom FROM religion is ensured. Why?
A few examples:
1. A religion may require that adulterers are stoned to death. However, this conflicts in the US with the US constitution.
2. A religion may declare that contraception is a mortal sin and instruct its pharmacists not to sell any contraception. However, contraception is legal in this country and anyone has the right to purchase contraception.
3. A religion may declare that same sex marriage is against their god. They may instruct their followers of the same sex not to marry. However, the constitutional right to equal treatment and equal rights conflict with this religious position.
Everyone has the right to THINK that their religion is above the constitution but everyone has the constitutional right to life, liberty, equality and justice irrespective of what anyone thinks.
We are therefore not free to execute everything that we believe. The net result is freedom FROM religion.
I think the world WOULD be a much happier place, if all gods were relegated to storytelling and mythology. However, I think that the route which will lead us there is through tolerance.
Teach about religions. Teach about religious people. Have these centers to peace, diversity and exchange of religious knowledge and theology.
As religions and religious people learn more about each other, they will become more tolerant of each other. Right know, the demonizing that is occuring is almost entirely built of ignorance. People are people, no matter the faith that binds them or the god they worship. Underneath the trappings of religion, people are all inherently the same mix of good and evil- mostly good.
As the tolerance is developed and nourished, more and more of the religious people will come to atheism on their own. The realization that Ghandi will not be in a Christian Heaven and that Mother Theresa will never see Jannah will start to eek reason into now open minds.
A closed mind can see nothing. To achieve tolerance, minds must be open. An open mind is the enemy to bigotry, intolerance, racism.
I believe that all people have a right to practice their own faiths. So long as their practice of that faith does not lead to hurting any other being. The right to freedom of religion stops at my door (my school, my work, my child, etc). While I personally do not believe in any religions, I very strongly believe in the freedom to have faith, the freedom to worship. Whether you worship in a church, temple, mosque or garden... that is the freedom and promise that we are ALL guarunteed. This pretense of a Christocentric country is a laughable, bold-faced lie.
...All THAT being said: I think liberalism is a good means by which to curtail this tendence, since respect for the rule of law is having so much trouble. And yes, creating an environment where different faiths can intermingle with each other (AND secularism) is an excellent means by which to achieve this. So yes: religious freedom will lead to less religious conflict, especially long term... but only so long as we stay focused on the church/state divide.
Learning about other religions would help to alleviate fears.
Just like we have laws that forbid murder, yet people still commit it.
I think the best a government can do is stay away from people's beliefs on religion. As long as their beliefs don't harm others, so be it.
Moderate Christians do not get headlines. We struggle along, day to day, trying to do what is right, and we seldom get noticed. That does not mean we don't exist, and it does not mean that we don't find rigid right-wing Christianists offensive. We do!