Who Desires Freedom?

November 19

Do all men yearn to be free? In the Western World, we presume they do. Much of our foreign policy centers around our conviction that people in other parts of the world yearn for personal and political relevance within their societies. Perhaps many do, but there is some indication that this is not a universal desire within some cultures.

Some evidence that suggests there is a different mindset among individuals from other backgrounds than our own might be the fact that Muslim women choose to wear the veil even when they are living in the West as students, where they are not under the scrutiny of their fathers or brothers or husbands.

They do so because of their own deep conviction that their god requires compliance of them to even the harshest of Islamic law. Perhaps this is why Muslim mothers do not protest when female circumcision, which is a devastating surgery, is performed upon their baby daughters. Perhaps this is why they allow their sons to perpetuate the attitude of second-class-citizenship to their sisters and wives without speaking out.

Those of us who live in lands of freedom where Christianity has been the dominant religion and personal value has been attached to every individual assent to the words of the Apostle Paul in II Corinthians 3:17, “…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” We embrace freedom and we long to extend it to others. We are taken aback when freedom appears to be disdained by those imprisoned by its absence.