I abhor, absolutely abhor, Nazi scum.

That said, Charles raises an interesting thing to think about in terms of where to draw lines.

I would propose the following as a thought experiment, and then perhaps once we establish the extreme case, try to get to the real world.

What is in tension is on the one hand, personal religious freedom - one of the cornerstones of Democracy and all we hold dear in the Modern West - with on the other hand, the ability of a society to protect it’s own members and preserve it’s own values.

Think of every argument for religious freedom and tolerance you can. At what point do you say no, sorry, this or that practice is not allowed?

Consider an an admittedly extreme case:

For certain, we would limit the religious freedoms of someone who believed in human sacrifice. I am bringing this because it is not only a no brainer, but it clearly establishes that there are indeed cases where the religious freedom argument does not prevail.

So what standard do we use? Why do we ban human sacrifice?

The strongest argument of course, is that it infringes on the rights (right to live, equal protection under the law etc…) of the sacrifice - even if they want to be sacrificed.

As an objective standard, we could posit that the actions of any religious belief that infringes on the human rights of others - to the extent that such actions would be a crime under the law in a purely secular case - need to be treated exactly as if these actions a secular crime.

As such, any interpretation of Islam (and I said interpretation carefully, because not all Muslims hold to or do these things) that allows for honor killings, female genital mutilation, murder of gay people, suicide bombing , violent protest or attempts to destroy the government - should not, and are not protected freedoms to act on. It is certainly legal to believe that the Koran tells you to do these things, however, if you act or threaten to act on them you are not protected.

But this is a less interesting question. What about the second point of the tension? Do people in a given nation or community have the right to set standards? Do religious practices that infringe on those standards have the right to protection? Here we have a much more thorny question.

I believe that the answer is in parallel to the first case. Practice however you want, provided that you do not infringe on the practice of others. Therefore, as an example, you can dress however you wish, but you have to show your face for the police or at the bank. If you open doors for crimes (by setting up a way for masked people to drive or go into banks) you infringe on the rights of the community at large. If you feel that swimsuits are immodest, don’t go to the public pool. If you feel that you need to swim, it is a free country, open your own pool and enforce you own dress/gender code, but you can not force the majority standard to change to you.

But we can go further. What if the majority country truly finds a certain belief or practice to be abhorrent because it is wrong? All of these arguments I have just made about human sacrifice in objective terms pale in comparison to the fact that killing people as worship is just evil - and no, I am not a relativist, my beliefs, which should be valued too, at least as much, call it definitively evil.

I think repressing women (and a score of things that Islamists preach) is definitively evil too.

How do my Western values, which matter to me just as much as the values of an Islamist value to him, come into the equation?

This is easily the most knotty of the possible questions to ask. Because how do I prevent the tyranny of the majority from crushing the rights of the individual if I go too far down that path? Therefore, The bottom line has to be live and let live, while protecting others.