Religion VS Freedom

I quit reading Dean Esmay a few months ago largely because of his continuing nonsensical attempts to justify the Iraq quagmire. Joe Gandelman sent me his way this evening and I have to give him kudos for swimming up stream.
Islam and Freedom

There is a belief in widespread circulation, mostly spread by conservative pundits and general hawks (Mark Steyn and the Little Green Footballs crew spring immediately to mind) that Islam is an inherently intolerant, slavery-oriented religion incompatible with democratic pluralism. The picture they paint is often of a dying West allowing the growing cancer of Islam to spread, with liberalism having weakened us to the point where we no recognize the threat or have the will to fight it.

If this picture is true, we should be seriously considering forbidding any muslims to immigrate, and looking with suspicion on all muslims within our borders.

It is, however, untrue. By objective, scientific measure.

He continues with some good evidence and it's worth a read.

While I applaud his work I think he misses an important point, it's not a religion that is an impediment to freedom but organized religion in general. A large central religion has historically been a political rather than spiritual institution. The Christian Church supported kings and tyrants for most of it's history. The power of the church was undercut beginning with Martin Luther and freedom only started to appear when the secularists were able to take over from the religious. We have seen the threat to out freedoms here in the United States increase as the Radical Christians have gained some political power. But what about the Communists you say. If you look closely at the institution of communism you will see similarities to a religion, a functional religion that lacks only a God.

The amount of freedom is not determined by which religion is dominant by how dominant the religion is in government.