Andrew McCarthy on Islam & Freedom

Seems to me they are mutually contradictory. Islam, after all, means "Submission".

McCarthy:

To borrow again from Cardinal Ratzinger, by exhibiting their trademark “indifference as to the content of what is believed or not believed,” Islam’s Western apologists depict sharia as gnomic and aspirational. It is not a regulatory code, they assure us, but a mystic, private compass by which the believer comes uniquely to experience the divine. Of course, when a woman who has been sexually assaulted is sentenced by a sharia tribunal to death for extramarital fornication, or a homosexual is similarly condemned for consensual relations, or an apostate for renouncing Islam, the executioners don’t hurl aspirations; they hurl stones.

Islamists hurl stones at rape victims, or shoot 14 year old girls in the face for daring to advocate for education of girls, or throw acid in the girls' faces, because they respect women.

Sharia...eschews our fundamental premises that the people are sovereign; that they may control their own destiny irrespective of any predetermined code; and that, while civil society may be profoundly influenced by spirituality, it is governed by secular laws.

Equal protection under those laws is the glue of a free, pluralistic society — but sharia rejects it.... Our basic liberties fare no better — sharia rejects freedom of conscience (apostasy from Islam is not merely a crime but a capital offense), freedom of speech (expression that casts Islam in an unfavorable light or sows discord among Muslims is a transgression as grave as apostasy), freedom of association, privacy, economic freedom, humane punishments, and the social commitment to tolerate and even appreciate most of our differences — not extinguish them by violence and coercion.

As we saw in Iraq, devotees also explicitly reject democracy, as people might well vote for un-Islamic laws. Voting allows people to defy the god's will, and defiance is most certainly not the god's will. Submission is.

More here.