How Tolerant of the Intolerant are we Supposed to Be

Recently the UAE Cabinet approved a list of 83 designated terrorist organisations including al Qaeda and the Islamic State. So far so good.  They also included Muslim organisations based in the West that are believed to be allied with the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Prominent among them are two American Muslim groups: the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society.

Now my point is not to comment as to whether these two groups are terrorist organisations or not.  To be honest designating a group as terrorist or not is a political expedient and is often merely a matter of perspective. I would even go so far as to agree that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.  But that's not the hard part.

What is much more difficult is the fact that the more clever, dare I say sinister organisations are those that espouse democracy, or more importantly the democratic process but whose goals are anything but democratic.

The Muslim Brotherhood falls under this mantle.

Draping themselves with the trappings of democracy, seeking political redress in monarchical/dictatorial states while working within the system they appeal to the oppressed masses. And in this guise they are extremely effective providing social welfare within the community, focusing on health, education and promising employment.

Their method is to use the democratic process to get elected.  Their goals however are to then dismantle the democratic process replacing it with a one-party state rule according to Islamic (Sharia) law.

It is a conundrum.  

If a majority of a population were to vote for a political party whose goals were to change the style of government, even if it were by one vote, and the new government were then to "legally" dismantle the state in such a fashion that the minority would never have the opportunity to reverse the electoral decision then I question the sanity of allowing the political party to participate in the electoral process.

I started off discussing the Muslim Brotherhood, whose manifesto most definitely is to introduce a non-democratic state.  But this is true for all political movements whose goals are the end of democratic institutions to be replaced by some sort dictatorship in whatever form it might be.

So how do we as a tolerant society deal with those wishing to exploit our tolerance to undermine our society?

It is an incredibly slippery slope.