Democracy excels at protecting the interests of majorities, but often at the expense of minorities. The world stumbled upon this sobering truth in March, when an Afghan court attempted to try Christian convert Abdul Rahman for apostasy - a capital crime under Islamic law. Bowing to massive international pressure, the presiding judge finally released Rahman on the contrived grounds of his "mental unfitness" to stand trial. German defense official Friedbert Pflueger characterized Rahman's trial as "intolerable," saying that Germany had sent soldiers to Afghanistan to help it "become a democratic country, not so that people can be sentenced to death on religious grounds." Apparently he didn't realize that democracy doesn't stand in opposition to theocracy - not so long as the majority favors the latter.
Rahman's case illustrates why democracy in the Islamic world has often so conspicuously failed to protect human rights: the majority of these nations' citizens do not content themselves with the freedom to practice their own religion, but aspire to use the power of government to compel others to practice their religion as well. In fact, the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has declared that he ultimately wants to institute Islamic law in the United States - but only, of course, once a majority of Americans convert to Islam. However, democracy can only flourish within a constitutional framework which guarantees the rights to life and liberty. The classical liberal philosophy which inspired America's Constitution and Bill of Rights limits the coercive authority of government to the realm of protecting life and liberty, and allows for persuasion alone in matters of creed.
The need for global religious freedom has nothing to do with Western arrogance and everything to do with the absence of any alternative. As John Locke argued in his seminal 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration, religious coercion is not merely impractical and undesirable, but impossible:
No man can, if he would, conform his faith to the dictates of another. All the life and power of true religion consists in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing. Whatever profession we make, to whatever outward worship we conform, if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind that the one is true, the other well-pleasing unto God, such profession and such practice, far from being any furtherance, are indeed great obstacles to our salvation.Behavior can be coerced, but belief must be persuaded. When religious authorities offer execution as the sole alternative to conversion, they indicate that they desire only to secure power, not to promote faith. John Locke commented on this phenomenon as well: "That any man should think fit to cause another man, whose salvation he heartily desires, to expire in torments, and that even in an unconverted estate, would, I confess, seem very strange to me, and, I think, to any other also."
Of course, no one can compel faith in classical liberalism any more than in Islam. But hearts and minds must change in order to avert continued bloodshed. The U.S. cannot achieve this; change must come from within. I pray for the emergence of a Muslim John Locke to prevent the Middle East from descending into ochlocracy, and the tyranny of many from replacing the tyranny of one.
