There is a particular kind of political stupidity that disguises itself as toughness — the kind that swings a sledgehammer at the foundation of one’s own house in order to frighten away the neighbors. Conservatives who are now calling for a ban on Muslim public prayer in the United States are engaging in exactly this kind of self-defeating bravado. The impulse is understandable. The cultural anxieties are real. The concern about Islamist ideology in Western nations is well-documented and entirely legitimate. But the remedy being prescribed would kill the patient along with the disease. If we allow government the power to ban Muslim prayer in public, we have handed that same government the power to ban Christian prayer in public — and given the trajectory of this culture, we should have no illusions about which direction that axe eventually swings.
The argument for banning Muslim public prayer has a surface-level logic that appeals to those who are watching, with growing alarm, the deliberate Islamization of the public square. They are not wrong to be alarmed. But they are wrong about the solution.
I disagree – Islam is NOT a religion! No deity would call for the killing of non-believers!