Hey, it's the middle of the week, so why not stir things up a little bit?
Several years ago, author and law professor Stanley Fish wrote an interesting book, provocatively titled "There's No Such Thing as Free Speech (And It's a Good Thing, Too)". Today, writing for Slate, Christopher Hitchens offers a column he could have titled "There's No Such Thing as Free Exercise", with the same basic point: religious expression must operate within certain necessary societal, legal standards.
In his usual caustic but thought-provoking style, Hitchens takes on the very concept of "freedom of religion." He couches the current national angst over Islam as one in a long line of such conflicts in America's history, in which the practices of certain faiths have butted heads with the public interest – most notably concerns of health and safety, for example, or even traditional social mores – and has found limits to our country's guarantee of "free exercise."
This, he argues, is a necessary step for a country determined to live in a religiously pluralistic society: to de-radicalize, in a sense, religious traditions. He believes some form of that tension is at the heart of the issue facing Islam in America today, concluding his piece this way:
[T]he United States will have a Muslim population of some size. The only question, then, is what kind, or rather kinds, of Islam it will follow. There's an excellent chance of a healthy pluralist outcome, but it's very unlikely that this can happen unless, as with their predecessors on these shores, Muslims are compelled to abandon certain presumptions that are exclusive to themselves. The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization. Those who pretend that we can skip this stage in the present case are deluding themselves and asking for trouble not just in the future but in the immediate present.
I offer this not as an endorsement of his column (and certainly not of his timing) by any means. I think his implicit characterization of the current anti-Muslim sentiment dominating headlines these days – which looks to me more like garden variety hatred, harassment and intimidation – as merely the smoothing out of the rough edges of a minority faith within the demands of civilization – is seriously off the mark as it pertains to the "trouble…in the immediate present." There is no constitutionally sanctioned national hazing of emerging religions, to "tame" or "domesticate" them.
More to the point, the issues driving the current, consuming interfaith crisis are not the result of some radical notions of Islam converging with Western society. This is no dispute about Sharia law, or even face veils, or the kind of cultural clash that might present Hitchens' point with a relevant opportunity. What we have instead are highly typical local zoning disputes, normally governed by a reasonable, neutral law, but in this case enflamed by a great deal of misinformation and mistrust, and catapulted by maybe the most extreme, far-reaching offense of guilt-by-association imaginable.
Hitchens opens by declaring his opposition to a completely unfettered free exercise of religion. But in a very real sense, we already don't have that kind of freedom. Limits that are rooted in compelling government interests – like those limiting freedom of speech – have always been a part of the First Amendment's guarantees. Religious freedom doesn't mean Americans can do whatever they want to whomever they want, when and wherever they want in the name of religion. But those limits are the exceptions that prove the rule, the boundaries at the far edges that give shape and make possible the freedoms we enjoy.
In that sense, Hitchens has a point, and a valuable one. What's important though is for those limits to be adjudicated based on legitimate government interests, not based on bias and misunderstanding and discomfort. Right now, the pressing threat to American values is the one being directed at Muslim Americans who merely want to build a house of worship, or practice their faith without living in fear, not the one Hitchens would have us face, that of – I guess – a rampant radical Muslim presence in America overturning principles essential to maintaining a healthy and stable society.
