Religion building or demolition?
Reader comment on item: [The RAND Corporation and] Fixing Islam

Submitted by Rick Flanders (United States), Apr 6, 2004 at 10:58

Promoting secularism is a good first step for breaking the cycle of violence rooted in a desire to revere and emulate the savage Prophet. However, the goal of secularism in the West is to deligitimize religion itself. The answer is not to remove a bad religion by stamping out all religion. It is to minimize a bad relgion, by allowing good ones to flourish.

It is curious that the tactics proposed here for "religion building" are the very same ones used by liberals in the U.S. to stamp out Christianity. I would say that the answer is not to deligitimize religion, but to deligitimize popular Middle Eastern myths both modern and historical and replace them with the truth. Promote religious freedom and freedom of the press and provide peace so that one can speak the truth without being burned and hung from a bridge.

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