The civics examination required of those applying for U.S. citizenship has come under criticism for a question that mentions “freedom of worship,” rather than “freedom of religion,” as a constitutional right. Peter Berger adjudicates the distinction between the two, and the connection between that distinction and current debates over the meaning of religious liberty:

[T]he two phrases are by no means synonymous: “freedom of worship” refers to an activity commonly undertaken in a specific location—a home, a church, a mosque. “Freedom of religion” is a much more expansive concept, including a person’s right to exercise his religion freely anywhere at all, including the public square. This might seem to be a trivial distinction, were it not for the fact that the narrower understanding of this freedom animates various non-trivial actions of the Obama administration and other positions taken by American progressives.

In a broader context what this means is the privatization (or, if you will, the domestication) of religion. There is an underlying, unspoken (perhaps unconscious) assumption: religion is okay if engaged in by consenting adults in private, not so if it spills over into public space. The similarity with pornography is telling: it comes through the mail in plain brown envelopes; you are free to view the contents in the privacy of your home; just don’t view them in a public place.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.