How far should we go in restricting freedom in order to promote virtue?

This is a really interesting issue, and the little essay below raises it nicely:

“Two Kingdoms: Christianity and Islam: How far should we go in restricting freedom in order to promote virtue?”

How far should we go in restricting freedom in order to promote virtue? Al-Farooq_Masjid_Mosque_Atlanta_Georgia

As both a Latter-day Saint and, rather distinctly, as someone with libertarian inclinations, I would prefer that the State’s role in such things be minimal.

I believe that I’ve recounted a story here about my experience at a Muslim-Mormon “dialogue” on the campus of Idaho State University in Pocatello many years ago.

Near the end, my surprisingly hardline Muslim debating opponent — a professional Muslim da‘i or missionary brought in for the event from Toronto — declared that, when Islam gained political power, all false religions would be outlawed.

I was shocked. This is an extreme position even for a Muslim. It has little or no historical precedent. I guess that I responded audibly, and he turned around to me, rather sharply and even angrily (or so it seemed to me at the time), and told me not to pretend that, if Mormonism ever gained such power, we wouldn’t ban all religions other than our own.

I responded that we absolutely would not. That we regarded coerced choice as no choice at all, that the point of this life was to freely choose God and truth (or, I suppose, to freely reject them), that a pre-mortal council in which coercion was rejected and agency affirmed was a fundamental element of our canonical and scriptural belief.

I’m fairly sure that I didn’t tell him about the Church’s rejection of the right, which we could legally have enjoyed as a Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts — a “corporation under public law” or, more simply, a “public corporation” — during the first few years after World War Two in Austria and Germany, to have tithes at least partially extracted for us by the coercive tax-gathering institutions of the State. If not, I should have, because our refusal demonstrates that our belief in religious liberty and individual agency isn’t mere lip-service.

How far should we go in restricting freedom in order to promote virtue? No-compulsion-1

Qur’an 2:256

I believe that I did bring up Qur’an 2:256: “There is no compulsion in religion” (la ikraaha fi al-diin). So far as I could tell, it had absolutely no impact on him.

It was a horrifying experience, and one that I’ve never forgotten. One of the longest and most unpleasant evenings of my life.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/08/how-far-should-we-go-in-restricting-freedom-in-order-to-promote-virtue.html

:fuckallah:

How far should we go in restricting freedom in order to promote virtue?

How far should we go in restricting freedom in order to promote virtue?

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