Twenty-five years after September 11, I find myself thinking less about what Americans feared that morning and more about what we learned afterward, and what we may already have forgotten. Freedom is extraordinarily powerful. It is also extraordinarily vulnerable.
Preserving it requires something harder than fear. It requires discernment, discipline & courage.
We have to know the difference between a Muslim neighbor exercising the same religious liberty the Constitution gives me as a Christian and an Islamist political movement seeking governmental or legal power. If we cannot make that distinction, we will fail in both directions: we will mistreat innocent Americans while potentially overlooking the people and organizations that actually deserve scrutiny.
Sam Westrop addresses that distinction in this video clip.
I experienced that tension firsthand this week. I was sitting on a panel moderated by Lara Logan when a discussion about Iran, Islamist movements and Sharia law became intensely heated. Abteen, my friend and someone whose concern about Islamism I share, became deeply emotional. His family’s history makes this subject painfully personal, which is entirely understandable.
But I interrupted him. Not because I wanted the subject silenced. Precisely the opposite. I wanted people to be able to hear it.
Anger born from hurt and pain can make an important argument impossible to hear. Sweeping accusations can cause legitimate evidence to be dismissed along with them. And when we treat every Muslim as though he or she were an Islamist, we abandon both truth and potential allies.
Whatever conclusions ultimately follow from the historical claims made during that exchange, and those claims deserve verification before being presented as fact, the moment illustrated something more fundamental:
Muslims and Islamists are not synonyms. Texas therefore faces two obligations simultaneously:
Protect religious liberty fiercely. Investigate unlawful conduct fearlessly. Those principles do not conflict. They depend upon one another.
I am also under no illusion about the stakes. Christians and other religious minorities continue to face persecution, and, in some places, horrific violence under Islamist regimes and extremist movements around the world.
History shows us what can happen when theocratic extremism gains unchecked power. I never want America, or my children, to experience anything resembling it.
That is precisely why I intend to approach this conversation intelligently and fearlessly: defending our constitutional freedoms, respecting our Muslim neighbors and our brothers and sisters of every faith, and confronting Islamist extremism wherever credible evidence leads us.
My hope is not to inflame a religious war, but to help prevent one. We should be able to protect religious liberty and confront those who would destroy it at the same time.
I also owe it to my friend Abteen to understand the specifics of what he was trying to communicate, including his concerns about a group he believed was disingenuously present at our panel. And I owe it to you, our readers, viewers and followers, to examine those claims without bias, while remaining transparent about the values that guide me and my Christian faith.
Watch the full exchange.
