Struggling With Islam: How a Tolerant Western Civilization has Caved to Intolerance

Western Civilization had enough of religious persecution. Millions fled religious persecution in Europe for The New World in America, but the battle for tolerance and liberty was not only won here in The States, but all across the Western World in general. This is not to say that we have not had to continue to struggle for religious liberty and against religious bigotry. In fact, no freedom that exists today exists without the constant struggle to preserve it. Tolerance, however, has its limits – as does freedom. If intolerance is tolerated and if freedom becomes a conduit for persecution, then a society must push back and become intolerant of intolerance, and violent towards violence. Otherwise, we not longer live by our virtues, but rather die by them.

The “Left” (primarily the Democrat Socialists in the Americas and in Europe) continue to bury their heads in the sand; so long as there is one peaceful Muslim left on earth, they will argue that we cannot address Islam as a problem itself, because not all Muslims are violent extremists. At the heart of the issue, and in principle, they are correct. We cannot condemn and destroy all Muslims because of the violent and vicious acts of those determined to enact Political Islam across the world.  On the contrary, we must not respond absolutely to a non-absolute. This does not mean, however, that we refuse to confront the dangers of Political Islam in the West and across the world.

Let me define Political Islam: Political Islam is any strain of Islamic thought which includes the implementation of Islamic beliefs into government at any level. Our struggle is not merely against violent Islamists like ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, but against peaceful Muslims who seek to enforce Islamic Law and Culture in societies where these laws and norms are foreign.

Tolerance for our worlds religions ought to remain only in accordance with the following principle: that no law or act of government shall come between any individual and their peaceful practice of their personal faith. That’s it. The moment any religious individual moves beyond the peaceful practice of their faith, into politics, policy, and law, we have a very serious problem on our hands.

We must be intolerant of all politically motivated religious movements, regardless of their particular brand of religion. We must remain intolerant of intolerance. Therefore, we cannot be tolerance of people’s tolerance of intolerance. We cannot accept the excuse, that while peaceful Muslims are not engaging in violence that this is the end of their responsibility. Our society and our government, our Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Pagan citizens together must be intolerant of intolerance.

Surprisingly, I cannot hear to the outrage in the face of Islamist terror across the world. Everyone seems to either want to ignore it or to excuse it. Why? Doing nothing is the same as doing something., It is the act of refusing to take responsibility for an evil in our world; and that is an act in support of evil.

Now, I call it evil because what we are addressing is a violent movement aimed at achieving political and religious goals in absolute opposition to and with no tolerance for dissent.

If we, as American citizens, are under constant threat from legal immigrants from Muslim Countries, then we must, as Rand Paul suggested, begin limiting immigrants from these countries. At the very least, we ought to be increasing our screening processes, but how we could refuse to limit immigration at this point is beyond me.

This responsible reaction to Islamic violence is not an act of force, no one will be harmed, defrauded, or persecuted. We are simply stating that we are intolerant of religious violence in America and are willing to take steps to reduce that violence and to reduce that threat. This is an action which Europe has failed to take and is suffering greatly from today. We too, are being to see the folly in our permissive tolerance.

Yet, I cannot see our politicians ever coming to terms with this. They are held hostage by absolutism. Not all Muslims are dangerous, therefore we cannot react to events and realities which are specific or isolated. Yet, if we do not react broadly to the specific, then we are essentially saying that we are willing to suffer the specifics and will simply deal with the consequences as they occur; because we refuse to put in place policies in general designed to nullify the particulars.

Every peacefully practicing religious person in all of Western Civilization should be treated with love and respect; but we cannot ignore where the threats we face come from and we cannot choose to do nothing to prevent the violence we are seeing throughout the Western World. We cannot be held captive by our principles, by absolutist logic, or by our tolerance of intolerance. Our government must act to protect the American People. Political Islam is a threat to our freedom of religion, to our Bill of Rights, to our freedom of expression, and to innumerable other liberties won by the blood of patriots. Sacrificing our liberty or security in the name of religious tolerance is utterly absurd and will incur, if not cause, untold catastrophes.