a third and more effective antidote

Submitted by Michiel Hegener (Netherlands), Mar 5, 2015 at 10:23

What is the antidote to radical islam? Moderate islam? Secularism? This article looks at both options. But the author misses the third and best solution: the abolition of the prohibition of apostasy - not by islam itself (islam will never allow that because it would be the end of islam) but by the states of the free world and their law enforcement agencies.

Moderate islam doesn't work:moderate muslims almost never raise their voice against radical islam. And secularism tars all sheep with the same brush: it implies that everyone, buddhists, christians, hindus and what have you, should reject faith and religion and become atheists.
Secularism's second meaning, separation between church and state, doesn't work either. We have that in the West and yet islamic terrorism is spreading fast.

The antidote to radical islam is horizontal religious freedom, for children in particular. (Vertical religious freedom = from state to individual. Horizontal = between citizens.) The laws are there, in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights article 18 in combination with the preamble, and the constitutions of many countries.

In 2007 I founded and chaired the support committee for the now dormant Dutch Committee for Ex-Muslims, and we made horizontal religious freedom a key issue in the whole debate. It has many aspects but what is of particular importance is to teach all children - in the West for starters but better of course world wide - at school that no one including parents has the right to tell them what to believe and what not. And that they, when growing up, do not have the right to tell anyone (their own children for instance) what to believe and what not.
By doing this we will kill the core ..., the prohibition of apostasy, in one generation.

In 2005 I wrote a book about this, but so far it's only available in Dutch, see www.vrijheidvangodsdienst.nl

The 12 September 2007 declaration of the Support Committee, which appeared in the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad with signatures from 75 prominent Dutch citizens, can be found here in English:
www.steuncomite-exmoslims.nl/english/steunverklaring.html

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