Muslim Heretics Conference

KEBABBLE
Turkey seeks a more modern Islam
By Fazile Zahir
“We are not here as Turkish Muslims to put ourselves in the service of Islam, but to put Islam in the service of life.”
- Fethullah Gulen, Turkish Islamic scholar and writer
FETHIYE, Turkey - The level of surprise with which the world’s media greeted the news that Turkey’s highest religious authority, the Diyanet, has instructed a commission of scholars to re-evaluate the Hadith (oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Prophet Mohammad) with respect to modern society, seems all out of proportion to the actual exercise the Ankara school is conducting.
The Western media are of course keen to promote moderate versions of Islam, but the tradition of ijtihad (legal interpretation) is

nothing new to Turkish religious thinkers. In 2006, the Diyanet had already started a process to filter the Hadith to delete misogynistic statements.
This new project is an even more ambitious attempt to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith and has taken the theologically radical step of ignoring later conservative texts in favor of earlier more liberal ones and by being prepared to evaluate the sayings of the Prophet within a historical framework.
The Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having a negative influence on a society that is in a hurry to modernize and some scholars are convinced that it obscures the original values of Islam.
Turkish Islam has always had a very different face and practice to Arab or African Islam for many reasons. Ottoman expansion forced Muslims to embrace and co-exist with Christian and other groups. This tradition of diversity allowed for the inclusive societal model, the millet system, a type of religious federalism. The empire was a melting pot, incorporating various ethnic and religious groups including Kurds, Croats, Asiatic tribes, Buddhists, Christians, Bektashi/Alevi and others. Through years of interaction, relations have softened between groups and Muslim ideals continually evolved.
Turkish modernization began at least a century before Kemalism. In the 19th century, the Ottomans produced a new secular civil law, a constitution, a parliament in 1876, and Western-style schools and universities for both sexes. They also encouraged sophisticated intellectual debate. In 1895, Descartes’ Discourse on Method was translated into Turkish under the auspices of the sultan.
Many other Western classics, as well as the political debates of the day in Europe, became part of Ottoman intellectual life. All this was embraced not just by the secular young Turks, but also by more open-minded Islamists. Fethullah Gulen, a modern-day key reformist and Sufi thinker extends tolerance toward secularists and non-believers in Turkey and sees this approach as a way to revive the multi-culturalism of the Ottoman Empire.
Prior to Islam, Turks were shamanistic and it was these pagan shamans who became the first proletyzing foot soldiers of Islam among the nomadic Turkish tribes, they were the Sufi order. Even at these early times, Turkish Muslims accepted and embraced the pre-Islamic traditions and combined them with their own in a form of Sufi mysticism.
Turkey’s Sufism has a non-literal and inclusive reading of religion and the Turkish understanding of Islam is very much punctuated by the tolerance of mystical poet Jalaladdin Rumi, love of Sufi poet Yunus Emre and reasonability of the Ottoman “saint” Haci Bektasi Veli. The main premise of this Turkish Islam is moderation, Sufi tradition is based on the philosophy that all creatures should be loved as God’s physical reflection and objects of the Creator’s own love.
There is no place for enemies or “others” in this system. Gulen, Turkey’s best-known and most modern Sufi philosopher, rejects the idea that a clash between the “East” and “West” is necessary, desirable or inevitable and frequently emphasizes that there should be freedom of worship and thought in Turkey.
Religious scholars in Turkey are largely a different breed to their counterparts in other Muslim countries. Rather than being ulema (priests) or practical men like engineers and medical doctors as they are in Egypt and Pakistan, they are mostly writers, poets, academics and artists who are open-minded and keen to discuss new ideas. These writers are not didactic in their writings but rather narrative in style and eclectic in terms of their sources. As early as 1951, an American scholar of religion W C Smith made the following comment: “Whereas the Arab dream is of restoration, the modern Turks consciously talk of novelty.”
Others attribute Turkish moderation with the important role of the 25% of Alevi Muslims who practice a religion that is confessional and based on adoration, but which does not seek to conquer. It is a fusion form of Islam that considers a person’s relationship with God to be relevant to the private sphere and which believes that women are equal to men. The tolerant approach of these people often referred to as “Islamic protestants”, allows them to maintain both a Kemalist tradition and a progressive religious spirit alive within the Turkish population.
Others see the growth of prosperity encouraging a relaxation of the religious laws.
Economic stability and security give one the luxury of picking and choosing while defining a personal identity. Turkey has recently experienced previously unknown economic growth for 20 quarters consecutively. Islamic social movements represent the “coming out” of now wealthy and visible conservative business men anxious to combine their private religion with the roles they now have in the public sphere. They are keen for their values to be reflected in Turkey’s new secular constitution and have been active in pushing forward human rights and freedom of expression in the headscarf debate that has gripped Turkey for the past six months.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party are now confidently in control of Turkey. Until this last election their power had previously been predicated on their “giving up” or “delaying” their “Islamic” demands on society in return for being allowed to govern. Now, with the huge electoral endorsement of 2007, they are moving forward with a program to allow Turkey more freedom of religious expression.
The recent headscarf debate has been resolved in a typically Turkish way, the government changed the law so university students can attend wearing a scarf - but their teachers still can’t. Even then only 30% of universities adhered to it and the rest carried on doing their own thing. Chaos did not ensue, there was some confusion and then the stoical Turkish people just get on with the new status quo, adapting as they always do to religious evolution without hardly creating a ripple in society. Turkey has the incredible capacity to do nothing less than recreate Islam, changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

A new generation awakens

By Jim Wallis

Published: March 12, 2008

Last month, I spoke at the Park Street Church in Boston, where the premier evangelist of the Second Great Awakening, Charles Finney, preached in 1831. The Billy Graham of his day, Finney called people to faith in Jesus Christ and then to enlist in the antislavery campaign. Finney actually pioneered the “altar call” that Billy Graham would later make famous. Why? So he could sign up his converts for the antislavery campaign. The other famous antislavery crusader of the time, the more secular William Lloyd Garrison, delivered his first abolitionist speech in this same church when he was only 23.

I faced a packed church of hundreds of twenty-something evangelicals who want to be a generation of new abolitionists - focusing on the most vulnerable people in our world today. They suspect that Jesus would likely care more about the 30,000 children who die globally each day due to unnecessary poverty and preventable disease than he might worry about gay marriage amendments in Ohio. This emerging generation is the leading edge of a new movement of “progressive evangelicals.”

The young evangelicals are not alone, but are part of a broader new and spiritually rooted progressive movement that includes the religious from many traditions, the “spiritual but not religious,” and also secular youth who hunger for a moral dimension to public life.

On the road, I also meet a new generation of young Catholics who are discovering their own church’s social teaching about “the common good,” as well as seminary students in mainline Protestantism forming “beatitudes societies” to study the core teachings of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.

Alongside them are young black pastors who don’t want to just sing the old anthems of the civil rights movement, but to make their own history for justice. Next-generation Hispanic Pentecostals and Catholics see issues like immigration as key religious and moral questions; and the sons and daughters of Asian-American immigrant Christians are not just focusing on assimilation like their parents did but are reaching out into their communities. All these are making the vital connection between evangelism and social justice, and were represented that night at Park Street, where the sense of history and the possibilities of this moment were palpable.

I see parallel movements of young people eager for “Jewish renewal” also connected to social justice, a prophetic new generation of Muslims who are standing up to extremism, and others who claim more diverse spiritual roots or even secular convictions but use the words “moral” and “movement” in relation to politics. I can feel the energy of a movement when I am with this new generation. This new generation is applying its faith to the greatest moral challenges of our time. When politics fails to resolve or even address the great issues, what often occurs is that social movements rise up to change politics, and the best ones have historically had spiritual foundations. Today, these issues include both global and domestic poverty, pandemic diseases that ravage the developing world, extreme violations of human rights in places like Darfur, the alarming threats of climate change and the imperatives of “creation care,” the need for a more ethical response to the genuine threats of terrorism, and a foreign policy more consistent with our best moral values.

Historians call these moments “great awakenings” when the revival of faith leads to big changes in society like the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, child labor law reform, and, most famously, civil rights. That we may be on the edge of such a time again has been almost entirely missed by a media obsessed with the political horse race, including changing religious voting trends.

But a new faith-inspired movement for social justice may be on the way, with a younger generation of believers as its cutting edge. And however they vote this time, the mobilization of that constituency could develop the capacity that elections rarely have by themselves - to really change politics.

Several weeks ago, a brief debate erupted in this presidential season about the roles of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson, and was mistakenly described as an issue of race.

It was not, but it did point to the complicated relationship between social movements and elected politics. A new generation of the faithful who speak of “movement politics” is beginning to understand that relationship.

Jim Wallis is author of “The Great Awakening” and president of Sojourners

A new generation awakens - International Herald Tribune

Religious Leaders Welcome Saudi Proposal

By LILY HINDY – 4 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Several Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders reacted warmly to a proposal for dialogue among the religions by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, welcoming the overture from the leader of the strict Muslim country as a major development in interfaith relations.

Specifics of the initiative, including whether Israelis could take part, remained unclear — leading some to caution against too much optimism. Abdullah’s proposal comes at a time of stalled peace negotiations and heightened Middle East tension. It also comes amid Muslim anger over cartoons published in Europe seen as insulting the Prophet Muhammad and in the wake of the pope’s controversial baptism of a prominent Muslim convert.

But Abdullah said Saudi Arabia’s top clerics gave him a green light — crucial in a society that bans non-Muslim religious services. Saudi Arabia, which follows a severe interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism, is also home to Islam’s two holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina.

“The idea is to ask representatives of all monotheistic religions to sit together with their brothers in faith and sincerity to all religions as we all believe in the same God,” the king said Monday night in Riyadh at a seminar on “Culture and the Respect of Religions.”

The king’s call — the first of its kind by an Arab leader — was described as a “dramatic and important development” by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest branch of American Judaism.

The Rev. James Loughran, director of the Catholic New York-based Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, also welcomed the proposal, saying he was “elated.”

Muhammad al-Zulfa, a member of the Saudi Consultative Council — an appointed body that acts like a parliament — said it was “a message to all extremists: Stop using religion.”

It was long overdue, said Michael Cromartie, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which monitors religious freedom globally and makes policy recommendations.

“I don’t care who you put in the room — the fact they’re having the conversation can only help,” he said. “It’s a courageous thing for the king to do. One should not expect Utopia, but it’s a start to have an open and free dialogue in a country with a reputation for religious oppression.”

How the dialogue could impact the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is far from clear. Saudi Arabia and all other Arab nations except Egypt and Jordan do not have diplomatic relations with Israel and generally shun unofficial contacts.

“My cautionary note would be, ‘Let’s see what he really means,’” said Lawrence Schiffman, chairman of New York University’s Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. “We need more details.”

Abdullah said he planned to hold conferences to get the opinion of Muslims from other parts of the world, and then meetings with “our brothers” in Christianity and Judaism “so we can agree on something that guarantees the preservation of humanity against those who tamper with ethics, family systems and honesty.”

Abdullah framed his appeal in strictly religious and ethical terms, aimed at addressing the weakening of the family, increasing atheism and “a lack of ethics, loyalty, and sincerity for our religions and humanity.”

A Saudi official with knowledge of the proposal said it was not intended to have a regional political angle, saying “the initiative is not aimed at the Middle East but at the whole world.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

But Abdullah, considered a reformer in Saudi politics, has in the past proposed peace deals with Israel, saying his country and other Arab nations are willing to recognize the Jewish state as long as it gives up land to Palestinians.

Abdullah even met with Pope Benedict XVI in November, the first encounter between a pontiff and reigning Saudi king. Benedict has stressed common family and moral values as a way to bridge differences and build relationships with other religions.

But Benedict has also upset many Muslims.

Most recently, the pope on Easter baptized Muslim convert Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born journalist who has denounced Islam. Aref Ali Nayed, director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan, criticized what he called “the Vatican’s deliberate and provocative act of baptizing Allam on such a special occasion and in such a spectacular way.”

In an audiotape released last week, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden accused Benedict of playing a “large and lengthy role” in what he called a “new Crusade” against Islam. Bin Laden also warned of a “severe” reaction for Europe’s publication of the Muhammad cartoons.

Some analysts suggested the king’s initiative was the culmination of increased dialogue among world religious leaders since the Sept. 11 attacks. The majority of the hijackers involved in the attacks were Saudis, and bin Laden himself hails from the country.

John Esposito, founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, said that the Saudi religious establishment has been very active in post-Sept. 11 interfaith dialogue, but to have this kind of appeal from the king is particularly significant.

Still, it was not clear whether Abdullah’s call would be followed by steps in the kingdom to relax the ban on non-Muslim worship services, as well as symbols from other religions, such as crosses and Bibles.

Religious practice is so restricted in Saudi Arabia that even certain Muslim sects, such as Sufis and Shiites, face discrimination, while conversion by a Muslim to another religion is punishable by death.

Associated Press writers Eric Gorski in Denver, Aron Heller in Jerusalem, Frances D’Emilio in Vatican City and Donna Abu-Nasr and Abdullah Shihri in Riyadh contributed to this report

The Associated Press: Religious Leaders Welcome Saudi Proposal

Egyptian-born Italian journalist Magdi Allam (L), who was a non-practicing Muslim, walks away after being baptized by Pope Benedict XVI during Easter Vigil mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica March 22, 2008, in Vatican City.

Marco Di Lauro / Getty

Magdi Allam is Italy’s answer to Ayaan Hirsan Ali, the Somalian-born Dutch writer and politician forced to live under police protection for her repeatedly stark public criticism of Islam. Like Hirsan Ali, the Egyptian-born Allam was raised in a Muslim family, before emigrating as a teenager to Europe, where he eventually became famous for railing against what he sees as fundamental flaws in his native religion. The Rome-based journalist has faced repeated death threats from Islamic radicals, and travels to speaking engagements in Italy and abroad with an armed security detail. Needless to say, neither Allam nor Hirsan Ali show signs of toning down their criticism.

A recurring topic of Allam’s articles were cases of Muslims who were threatened with death for seeking to convert to Christianity. And now, Allam has himself become a Roman Catholic, converting in a baptism rite inside St. Peter’s Basilica, a ceremony conducted by no less than Pope Benedict XVI. Allam has held a unique public role as the most prominent Muslim commentator — and critic of Islam — right in the Vatican’s backyard. Church officials may be pleased that Allam has so publicly joined the Catholic flock, but he is unlikely to become any kind of mediator in the Vatican’s attempts to start a dialogue with Islam.

That is because Allam is seen as almost belligerently anti-Islamic. After studying sociology at Rome’s La Sapienza University, Allam began writing for the Italian daily La Repubblica, covering the first Gulf War and chronicling everyday life of the country’s growing Muslim population. Initially, he wrote favorably about multiculturalism, and warned about the risks of racism against Muslims in this heavily Catholic nation. But after 9/11, now writing for another major newspaper, Corriere della Sera, he became an increasingly harsh critic of Islam, both inside and outside of Italy. He warned against the “Islamization” of Europe, and urged opposition to the building of new mosques in Italy. In his provocatively titled 2007 book Viva Israel: From the ideology of death to the civilization of life, my story, he described his transformation from hating Zionists as a youth to realizing “that hatred easily comes to include all Jews, then all Christians, then all liberal and secular Muslims, and at the end all Muslims who do not want to submit to Islamic radicals’ will.”

This and other writings have led to widespread criticism among Muslims in Italy, who say he depicts only the worst of Islamic faith and culture. Not surprisingly, Allam has won the admiration of some of Europe’s prominent conservatives and critics of Muslim immigration. He has been compared to Hirsan Ali, herself an avowed atheist who long ago renounced her faith, and now divides her time between Europe and the United States. Allam also struck up a friendship with Oriana Fallaci, the late Italian journalist and writer, who in recent years wrote anti-Muslim screeds and warned against Europe becoming “Eurabia.” Fallaci, a Catholic by birth, was a non-believer through her adult life, though reportedly was exploring questions of faith as she battled terminal cancer. In 2005, she met privately with Pope Benedict, but was still said to be an atheist when she died the following year.

Allam is the latest example of Benedict’s attempts to re-engage contemporary European secular culture as well. The official Church line is that the decision for the Pope to perform the baptism himself was not extraordinary. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi emphasized that Allam was just one of seven adults baptized Saturday during an Easter vigil mass, saying that the Pope performed the rite “without making any ‘difference of people,’ that is, considering all equally important before the love of God and welcoming all in the community of the Church.” Nonetheless, Allam’s public conversion is another reminder that the Vatican is not shying away from the more prickly questions in its complicated relations with Islam. Benedict has made what he calls a “frank” public conversation with the Muslim world a high priority of his papacy, arguing that Islam should address the violent minority within its ranks by incorporating the theories of “natural law” the way Christianity did with the Western ideas of the Enlightenment.

While scores of top Muslim scholars have engaged the theologian Pope on this and other topics, some radical leaders see him as a prime nemesis. In an audio tape released last week, Osama bin Laden accused Benedict of playing a “large and lengthy role” in a “new Crusade” against Islam, which included the publication in Denmark of cartoons denigrating the prophet Muhammed. Father Lombardi dismissed the accusation, noting that Benedict repeatedly criticized the offensive cartoons.

The Holy See’s diplomacy in the Muslim world stretches well beyond the Pope’s words. High on the agenda is the Vatican push for the right to build Christian churches in Muslim-dominated countries. Officials in Rome have been heartened over the past two weeks with news of the first Catholic church opening in Doha, Qatar, and negotiations underway to potentially build one in Saudi Arabia. Still, Church officials say that the question of religious freedom must ultimately also mean freedom to change religion, and note that some Muslims insist that conversion from Islam is apostate, and punishable by death. In 2006, Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity, fled his native country after death threats and arrived in Rome, where he received political asylum from the Italian government and the support of the Pope.

A Muslim Critic Turns Catholic - TIME

Islam and Free Speech

By PETER HOEKSTRA
March 26, 2008; Page A15

The Netherlands is bracing for a new round of violence at home and against its embassies in the Middle East. The storm would be caused by “Fitna,” a short film that is scheduled to be released this week. The film, which reportedly includes images of a Quran being burned, was produced by Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament and leader of the Freedom Party. Mr. Wilders has called for banning the Quran — which he has compared to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” — from the Netherlands.

After concern about the film led Mr. Wilders’s Internet service provider to take down his Web site, Mr. Wilders issued a statement this week that he will personally distribute DVDs “On the Dam” if he has to. That may not be necessary, as the Czech National Party has reportedly agreed to host the video on its Web site.

Marked for death: Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Reasonable men in free societies regard Geert Wilders’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, and films like “Fitna,” as disrespectful of the religious sensitivities of members of the Islamic faith. But free societies also hold freedom of speech to be a fundamental human right. We don’t silence, jail or kill people with whom we disagree just because their ideas are offensive or disturbing. We believe that when such ideas are openly debated, they sink of their own weight and attract few followers.

Our country allows fringe groups like the American Nazi Party to demonstrate, as long as they are peaceful. Americans are permitted to burn the national flag. In 1989, when so-called artist Andres Serrano displayed his work “Piss Christ” — a photo of a crucifix immersed in a bottle of urine — Americans protested peacefully and moved to cut off the federal funding that supported Mr. Serrano. There were no bombings of museums. No one was killed over this work that was deeply offensive to Christians.

Criticism of Islam, however, has led to violence and murder world-wide. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie over his 1988 book, “The Satanic Verses.” Although Mr. Rushdie has survived, two people associated with the book were stabbed, one fatally. The 2005 Danish editorial cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad led to numerous deaths. Dutch director Theodoor van Gogh was killed in 2004, several months after he made the film “Submission,” which described violence against women in Islamic societies. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch member of parliament who wrote the script for “Submission,” received death threats over the film and fled the country for the United States.

The violence Dutch officials are anticipating now is part of a broad and determined effort by the radical jihadist movement to reject the basic values of modern civilization and replace them with an extreme form of Shariah. Shariah, the legal code of Islam, governed the Muslim world in medieval times and is used to varying degrees in many nations today, especially in Saudi Arabia.

Radical jihadists are prepared to use violence against individuals to stop them from exercising their free speech rights. In some countries, converting a Muslim to another faith is a crime punishable by death. While Muslim clerics are free to preach and proselytize in the West, some Muslim nations severely restrict or forbid other faiths to do so. In addition, moderate Muslims around the world have been deemed apostates and enemies by radical jihadists.

Radical jihadists believe representative government is un-Islamic, and urge Muslims who live in democracies not to exercise their right to vote. The reason is not hard to understand: When given a choice, most Muslims reject the extreme approach to Islam. This was recently demonstrated in Iraq’s Anbar Province, which went from an al-Qaeda stronghold to an area supporting the U.S.-led coalition. This happened because the populace came to intensely dislike the fanatical ways of the radicals, which included cutting off fingers of anyone caught smoking a cigarette, 4 p.m. curfews, beatings and beheadings. There also were forced marriages between foreign-born al Qaeda fighters and local Sunni women.

There may be a direct relationship between the radical jihadists’ opposition to democracy and their systematic abuse of women. Women have virtually no rights in this radical world: They must conceal themselves, cannot hold jobs, and have been subjected to honor killings. Would most women in Muslim countries vote for a candidate for public office who supported such oppressive rules?

Not all of these radicals are using violence to supplant democratic society with an extreme form of Shariah. Some in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark are attempting to create parallel Islamic societies with separate courts for Muslims. According to recent press reports, British officials are investigating the cases of 30 British Muslim school-age girls who “disappeared” for probable forced marriages.

While efforts to create parallel Islamic societies have been mostly peaceful, they may actually be a jihadist “waiting game,” based on the assumption that the Islamic populations of many European states will become the majority over the next 25-50 years due to higher Muslim birth rates and immigration.

What is particularly disturbing about these assaults against modern society is how the West has reacted with appeasement, willful ignorance, and a lack of journalistic criticism. Last year PBS tried to suppress “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center,” a hard-hitting documentary that contained criticism of radical jihadists. Fortunately, Fox News agreed to air the film.

Even if the new Wilders film proves newsworthy, it is likely that few members of the Western media will air it, perhaps because they have been intimidated by radical jihadist threats. The only major U.S. newspaper to reprint any of the controversial 2005 Danish cartoons was Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. You can be sure that if these cartoons had mocked Christianity or Judaism, major American newspapers would not have hesitated to print them.

European officials have been similarly cautious. A German court ruled last year that a German Muslim man had the right to beat his wife, as this was permitted under Shariah. Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, stated last month that the implementation of some measure of Shariah in Britain was “unavoidable” and British Muslims should have the choice to use Shariah in marital and financial matters.

I do not defend the right of Geert Wilders to air his film because I agree with it. I expect I will not. (I have not yet seen the film). I defend the right of Mr. Wilders and the media to air this film because free speech is a fundamental right that is the foundation of modern society. Western governments and media outlets cannot allow themselves to be bullied into giving up this precious right due to threats of violence. We must not fool ourselves into believing that we can appease the radical jihadist movement by allowing them to set up parallel societies and separate legal systems, or by granting them special protection from criticism.

A central premise of the American experiment are these words from the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” There are similar statements in the U.S. Constitution, British Common Law, the Napoleonic Code and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. As a result, hundreds of millions in the U.S. and around the world enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and many other rights.

These liberties have been won through centuries of debate, conflict and bloodshed. Radical jihadists want to sacrifice all we have learned by returning to a primitive and intolerant world. While modern society invites such radicals to peacefully exercise their faith, we cannot and will not sacrifice our fundamental freedoms.

Mr. Hoekstra, who was born in the Netherlands, is ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Islam and Free Speech - WSJ.com