Intolerant of Intolerance

A MATTER OF DEGREES

“The main reason I’d been glad to leave America was Protestant fundamentalism. But Europe, I eventually saw, was falling prey to an even more alarming fundamentalism whose leaders made their American Protestant counterparts look like amateurs. Falwell was an unsavory creep, but he didn’t issue fatwas. James Dobson’s parenting advice was appalling, but he wasn’t telling people to murder their daughters. American liberals had been fighting the Religious Right for decades; Western Europeans had yet to even acknowledge that they had a Religious Right.”

Bruce Bawer. While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. 2006.

COMMENT

For those who have detected dreams of a coming Levitical society in the words and actions of Christian Dominionists, Brewer’s account of Islamist inroads in a pathologically tolerant Europe sounds a call to stand firm in defense of a secular society. Close readings of both the Torah and the Koran will reveal that the application of literalist thinking must logically lead to violence. The relatively benign face of the American Religious Right gives cover to the Dominionists’ more malign intent. If a sullen gathering of right-thinking men stones my neighbor for an expression of religious doubt, it matters little which sacred text provides legal sanction for the punishment.

CS