Ross has yet another post today in which he struggles to identify a third way for American Muslims between wielding the sword of jihad on their countrymen and watering their beliefs down to the thin gruel of secularism. The solution really isn’t that complicated.
As I indicated in a previous post, the genius of our system is that it permits genuinely pious people of all kinds of faiths to practice their religion without any significant interference so long as they do not attempt to impose their beliefs on others. Since no American Muslim could reasonably hope to force his practices on a country with predominantly Christian roots, this is a perfectly satisfactory resolution of Douthat’s issue, and it does not mean that Muslims must become purely secular people.
In the final analysis, I think this question, for Ross, is really about abortion. He does not see how a committed, passionate Catholic can avoid being a political crusader, and he assumes that religious people of all other faiths are similarly committed to remaking society in their own image. They aren’t.