What kind of a society do you want to live in? That question matters a lot if you’re interested in tackling the problem of Islamism. We can agree that we don’t want to live in an Islamist theocratic dictatorship. That would be awful. It’s a terrible form of government that institutionalizes human rights abuses.
But what we want instead matters.
- If you want to get rid of Islamism, but want to replace it with a government that heavily favors your religion and restricts the religious liberties of Muslims, that’s hypocritical.
- If you want to get rid of all religion, and have a government that vigorously enforces state atheism and restrict religious expression in the name of reason, that’s an attack on freedom of conscience.
- If you hate Islamism, but only because it’s a foreign ideology, and you want to revive a mythologized idea of a pure, white conservative state, that’s racism.
- If you want to get rid of Islamism and liberalism, democracy and capitalism, and replace it with an International Communist Workers Republic, that isn’t going to get you any more freedom than the Islamists would give you.
Clarion Project believes in opposing Islamism due to its threats to human rights and freedom of conscience.
We do so based on upholding the principle of the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
A society based on those principles is the kind of society we want to live in.
There would be no point in eradicating Islamism only to replace it with something else that’s just as bad.
The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
Beginning tomorrow and for the next eight days, Clarion will be running a series explaining how and why the First Amendment came about, why it never developed Islamic countries and why Islamists oppose the principle today.
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