Judging Religion

The New York Times had an excellent editorial today about defending the religious freedom of Muslims.

The hypocrisy it mentions (right-wing Christians trying to deny Muslims the ability to build mosques or wear religious garb in public, despite the fact that many of these are exactly the same accommodations Christians complain about not getting) is certainly one reason why this discussion is annoying. The other one is the common question of why the NYT would publish a defense of Islam, or why liberals would support it, given the religion's flaws.

I can certainly understand the sentiment, frankly. I don't hold Muslim views on gender roles in very high regard. I think Shariah law can be easily abused to oppress others. And I don't really like it when people propose laws that criminalize things like blasphemy and apostasy.

Then again, I don't hold a lot of Christian doctrine in these areas in very high regard either. (Or Jewish, particularly Orthodox Jewish, or Mormon, or some Buddhist sects... and so on.) If the best one can say about their religion is that its extremists aren't quite as bad as a different group's extremists, it's not a compliment. And any criticism I'm going to direct towards Muslims for their failings is going to fall on a number of other groups as well, whether that's for gender roles, using their religion as an excuse to obtain political power, trying to force others to live by religious laws, or any one of a number of other things.

That fairness I'm going to abide by in my criticisms also has to be applied to other matters of law as well. I can't deny only Muslims the ability to build mosques. I'd rather deny everyone the right to use their religion as an excuse to discriminate, but if we're going to allow Christians to do it, we're going to have to allow other groups to do it as well. I can deny Muslims the right to use Shariah law in many cases (like divorce) where it would be a burden on the other party's rights - but then, Christians can't just ignore divorce and marriage laws either, so that's still entirely fair.

Essentially, the point here is that any liberal defense of Islam extends exactly as far as the leeway we're willing to extend to any other religion and no farther. If any Christians have a problem with that - if they think our religious freedom laws grant too much ability for Muslims to infringe on others' rights - they might want to ask themselves who asked for those laws to extend as far as they do. And whether they're willing to live with the consequences of rolling them back.