America was founded on Western values, and prospered because of it. Among these sacred principles are the freedom to have civil discourse and freedom of religion. Protection of these Western values from corruption should therefore be of supreme importance.
Activities done in private which have little effect on the public need not ―and perhaps should not― be publicly scrutinized. However, when these activities spread into public interests, scrutiny is not only justified, but indispensible. The latter is the condition of religion and the activities it provokes.
The dust has long settled in a recent conflict, which consisted of the events leading up to the May 10 “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”. Such a suggestion is sacrilege to Islam; this demonstrates a clear struggle between Westernism and Islam because freedom of expression is a revered enlightenment virtue. In a sacrifice to the gods of political correctness, religious moderates voluntarily surrendered the very idea of freedom which has undeniably built and fostered our civilization.
Another contentious topic was “International Burn a Koran Day”, instigated by the rather ironically named Dove World Outreach Center. The purpose of this necessarily destructive event is to eradicate a book that this particular church considers “of the Devil”, and the organization gained theological support from Biblical examples of early Christians committing libricide themselves. To be sure, Christianity’s rich tradition of book burning does not need another chapter.
Islam is a topic which needs scrutiny. If religion in general can incite people to bomb trains and abortion clinics and fly planes into buildings, moderates are only retarding prospects of peace by shielding religion from the public forum. Those who claim that these zealots are not true practitioners of their faith preclude it by creating a taboo against holding religion to the fire of scrutiny. This prevents any verification of that claim. If they are right, they have nothing to lose, and humanity has everything to gain from this acquired knowledge. The sacredness of religion’s indisputability is one spell which quickly needs to be broken.
The preposition that drawings of the prophet are offensive and thus should not have been disseminated was beside the issue. In the case of the book burning event, achieving their intended ends of annihilation is practically impossible in an age with the Internet. At hand was the resulting conflict from the incompatibility of authoritarianism with Westernism. This is a struggle in which the Internet can only serve Westernism. The Internet is the public forum in which these issues can be scrutinized, and only the ideas most fit for existence are left.
