Surveying the state of religious tolerance throughout the Muslim world, Daniel Philpott argues against those who claim Islam is fundamentally incompatible with freedom of religion. He notes that while there are regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Iran that ruthlessly repress deviation from official interpretations of Islam, there are important counter-examples:
Eight of the eleven religiously free majority-Muslim states are in West Africa. . . . The other three are Lebanon, Albania, and Kosovo. While religious freedom varies in this group—in Gambia, for instance, the government enforces some of the rulings of the Supreme Islamic Council, a non-governmental group of religious leaders—none of these divergences prevent these countries from being among the most religiously free in the world.
[These countries] are free not despite or apart from their Islam but because of their Islam. In most of these countries, Muslims are the vast majority while Christians are a significant minority. Islam in these countries typically has a tradition of tolerance toward other religions that goes back centuries and existed well before colonial times. Colonial governments historically allowed broad freedom to practice religion and collaborated with religious leaders. Today, interreligious harmony is common, marked by mutual attendance at religious celebrations, interfaith friendships, and—in some countries—interreligious marriage. . . .
If the religiously free states show that Islam can be free, [a] second pattern—secular repression—provides complementary evidence that Islam is not necessarily the cause of all of the religious repression in the Muslim world. . . . .
Most practitioners of the secular-repressive pattern have been highly authoritarian. . . . They seek to contain and control religion, typically “establishing” a moderate version of Islam and closely controlling the governance of mosques, seminaries, universities, and schools. . . . They will simultaneously suppress more traditional and radical forms of Islam. Secular leaders [such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or the Assads in Syria] have presented these religious figures as enemies of the state and used them to make the case for authoritarian rule.
Read more on Public Discourse: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/01/18468/