Religious Liberty and the Muslim World

The protection of religious liberty remains a central concern in Iraq, even as the Iraqis struggle toward a constitutional system. Christianity Today features an important interview with Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House. She makes a very powerful argument:
Our State Department bureaucracy, most of our policy makers in Congress, and those in the media are intellectually unprepared for understanding why the denial of individual religious freedom for Muslims is so subversive to democracy. They describe Saudi Arabia’s system simply as rigid and puritanical. We need to understand extreme Islamic law better because it is our main ideological challenge today.