TOLERANCE - When does tolerance become an excuse for surrendering our freedoms? When fear of being called racist or Islamophobic prevents us from confronting actual threats, that fear makes us vulnerable. We should not ignore clear statements of intent. When a movement advocates replacing constitutional freedoms with compulsory religious rule, take that ambition seriously. When extremists attack churches, synagogues, mosques, or other places of worship, hold those responsible accountable.
The destruction of religious sites and cultural heritage by extremist movements should never be dismissed or excused. But responsibility belongs to the perpetrators and their supporters. It cannot reasonably be assigned to every member of a religion.
The issue is what people advocate and do. Calls for violence, forced religious obedience, or the denial of equal rights deserve scrutiny whether they come from a preacher, a political organization, or an online activist. Social media can expose such threats, but selected posts cannot establish the intentions of an entire population.
A free society protects religious belief, but it must also protect the right to reject that belief, criticize it, and live without submitting to coercive demands. When Islamist movements demand tolerance while denying those freedoms to others, our leaders should confront the contradiction instead of congratulating themselves on their sensitivity and turning a blind eye to intolerance. A society that cannot defend its own freedoms leaves them at the mercy of people prepared to take them away.
Women’s safety is not negotiable. Sexual assault does not become a cultural misunderstanding because the perpetrator belongs to a minority. Any journalist, politician, or activist who minimizes an assault to protect a political narrative deserves to be held accountable. A woman should never have to choose between demanding justice and being branded a bigot. Whether she is white, Black, Muslim, Christian, or anything else, her safety must come before somebody’s anxiety about how the story will look.
That anxiety can corrupt the entire discussion. When a crime is committed, establish what happened and hold the offender responsible. When an ideology is invoked to justify violence against other religions or communities, confront the conduct and use the legal tools available to protect those threatened. Concern about prejudice must never become permission to conceal facts, soften threats, or treat a victim as an embarrassment to a preferred narrative. Nor should an offender’s actions become an excuse to condemn innocent people who share that offender’s faith.
Declarations that coexistence is unacceptable, that religious law must prevail over civil rights, or that other believers must submit describe a political ambition. A threat of forced conversion or death deserves to be treated as a serious threat. People making such declarations are telling us what they want. We should neither dismiss their words nor assume they speak for everyone in their religion.
This is the danger I mean by coercive Islamism: the effort to give a particular interpretation of religious authority power over everyone else’s life. It reaches into speech, education, family relationships, sexuality, and conscience. Once religious obedience becomes a requirement enforced by the state or through intimidation, the individual loses the freedom to say no. That is the point at which accommodation becomes complicity. A government responsible for protecting its citizens cannot stand aside while a religious authority decides which of them deserve freedom and which deserve punishment.
The same objection applies to any religious or political movement seeking that power. The standard must be individual freedom, applied consistently.
Before discussing respect for a religious legal order, ask what it would do to the people living under it. Could a woman claim equal standing? Could a believer leave the faith? Could a religious dissenter speak without fear? Cultural sensitivity cannot settle those questions. The person threatened with punishment needs protection, not a lecture about the importance of understanding the people threatening him.
Apostasy brings the contradiction into focus. Freedom of religion includes the freedom to walk away. If leaving can bring a death sentence, belief has become compulsory. I do not care how venerable the justification is or how sincerely its defenders hold it. Nobody should have to remain in a religion to stay alive. A political movement that seeks to enforce that obligation is attacking freedom of conscience. We should say so plainly, and officials should defend the dissenter with the same determination they bring to defending the right to worship.
Women deserve that same determination. Wherever religious authorities restrict education, compel religious dress, or deny women equal participation in public life, those restrictions deserve scrutiny and opposition. A woman should control her own choices. A claim of divine authority cannot erase that right. I have no patience for a feminism that folds like an unstarched shirt when defending women under coercive religious rule becomes politically uncomfortable. If an activist can condemn the patriarchy at home, she can condemn it when religious authorities invoke sacred law. The victim’s freedom should decide the argument.
Religious minorities should also stop being treated as inconvenient footnotes. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Yazidis, and others facing religious persecution belong in any serious conversation about oppression. Forced conversion, destroyed heritage, and unequal legal status deserve attention. Concern for Palestinians does not require indifference to any of these people. Human rights lose their meaning when outrage depends on which perpetrator is useful to condemn and which victim is politically convenient to defend.
This is why alliances between self-described progressives and authoritarian religious movements deserve scrutiny. Before marching alongside a movement, ask whether it would allow you to live freely if it held power. Would women retain their rights? Would gay people be safe? Would criticism be permitted? A common enemy is a poor substitute for common principles. People celebrating liberation should examine the authority they are helping legitimize. Otherwise, they may lend their voices to a movement that would silence them the moment it gained the means.
Nor can we afford to dismiss ideologically motivated violence as meaningless madness. A person taught to regard murder as duty and death as glorious martyrdom may act purposefully within that worldview. Understanding the motive helps us confront the threat. It does not excuse it. We should examine the evidence in each case, including beliefs used to recruit people or justify violence. Refusing to discuss those beliefs may spare us an uncomfortable conversation, but it offers little protection to the next intended victim.
Protection also requires civil law that reaches everyone. Religious customs may be voluntary; intimidation cannot be. A person living inside a close-knit community must retain access to the police, courts, and protections available to any other citizen. Officials cannot outsource that person’s rights to local religious authorities. The same principles should govern our expectations of newcomers and those seeking public office: equal citizenship, freedom of conscience, and obedience to civil law. No religious claim should provide an exemption from respecting another person’s rights.
Anyone asking us to respect his freedom must respect ours. Anyone who comes here must obey our laws and respect the freedoms of others. No religious or political conviction entitles anyone to impose their rules on their neighbors. That obligation applies equally to newcomers and citizens. Nobody is our superior by virtue of religion. Respect for different beliefs cannot become an obligation to surrender our own rights.
These principles also require us to protect peaceful believers from discrimination. Their rights do not disappear because extremists invoke the same religion. Defending freedom means distinguishing between those exercising their beliefs and those trying to compel everyone else’s obedience.
That obligation becomes especially serious when someone seeks political power. A candidate who would subordinate constitutional freedoms to religious authority should be challenged on that position and rejected at the ballot box. The answer is political: examine the candidate’s actual agenda, demand plain answers about the freedoms they would protect, and oppose coercive proposals peacefully through elections. Voters should insist that every candidate defend equal citizenship and freedom of conscience without exceptions for favored causes.
That is why I regard movements seeking compulsory religious authority as a danger to a free society. Their demands threaten the freedoms that allow different people to share a country. We should be confident enough to confront those demands, enforce public order, protect women and religious dissenters, and insist on honest reporting.
Tolerance has a purpose: to let people live freely despite their differences. When it becomes an excuse to leave people exposed to coercion or violence, it betrays that purpose. I want leaders willing to defend freedom—and disciplined enough to direct their opposition at those threatening it.
(Eliot Cohen is a longtime civic advocate who has served on the Neighborhood Council, the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and the Board of Homeowners of Encino, where he was president of HOME for over seven years. A retired Wall Street executive with a 35-year career, Eliot brings a sharp eye to local governance. He critiques the bureaucratic missteps of City, County, and State officials. Eliot and his wife split their time between Los Angeles and Baja Norte, Mexico.)
