It never ceases to amaze me that “religious extremists”—whatever that means—aggressively force the integration of their religious beliefs with government when this is clearly destructive to their own interests. For a religious state to prosper, the religion in question would inevitably become secularized to prevent collapse, the eruption of threatening riots, or simply dysfunction. Such accommodation for diverse citizens theoretically “weakens” the grasp of the religion on the individual, and the ideal exclusivity of the cult is eroded and destroyed. Islam was much more accepting when it was an empire than it is as practiced in its modern state. The empire collapsed just as it began to deny rights to half its population.

“Extremists” desire both rigidity and expansiveness—utterly impractical and unsustainable. If they truly abide by an inflexible and unyielding religious interpretation and elevate its practice above all else, they would forfeit the ideal of a state ruled by it for the sake of its preservation.