Religious Freedom & Toleration by Christine Hughes A distinction could be drawn that there is a dichotomy in ruling states, for one, the state non-religious and completely separated from faith, and another, that is in essence entirely faith guided and often ran alongside a religious institution. Sayyid Qutb, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Osama Bin Laden were Islamic religious fundamentalists that argued the state functioned best when working with, and inspired by, a religious institution. Although the combination of church and state in fact violates the sanctity of doctrine, as argued in John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration, in which Locke also states his case as to why the common man would never submit himself to a religious authority in …show more content…
This makes faith-based states unable to gain the support of the common man, and therefore unsustainable. Religious fundamentalism is founded on the principle that law alone is not enough for society to function in a behaved, reformed fashion, but that faith inspires civility. Testimony can be found that most major developed world religions have a code of ethics for the followers of that faith to adhere to, and this is including the Muslim faith. Hesitantly, it must be said that Islam’s code, the Five Pillars, is incongruent to the major moral code supplied by western Christianity, which is the main faith in John Locke’s domain (what at the time was the English kingdom). The Five Pillars of Islam include …show more content…
The risk of combining a state with faith is one of trying to voice as many faiths and variances within that faith at once, but the difficulty rises in the fact that faith is often a very sensitive subject, and often turns violent. In some branches of Islam it is considered just for a follower to kill in the name of Allah (God) if that death was of a member of a non-muslim faith, but in other branches of Islam, ones which follow the Ten Commandments, it is considered sinful to engage in any violent actions of the sort. Osama bin Laden, in his Letters to America, made the case for fatwa, or the killing of Americans, to prove their loyalty to Islam, because he firmly believed American culture was heavily tainted with sin and distaste for the Muslim identity. In this case, the people must entrust into one individual, or one group, to make grand decisions about what is the ideal way to embrace and live their faith to the highest decree, at the risk of suppressing and harming