Religious intolerance

My family and I attend an Arab church here in Jordan, where there there is officially religious freedom.  For a long time the church rented a ground floor apartment, but the pastor had constant friction with the landlord and with Muslim neighbors who opposed the church's presence in their neighborhood.  We recently moved to a new building, and the landlord actually let the pastor put up a sign last Saturday.  That night somebody tore down all the letters and cracked some of them in half.  The pastor showed me the damage the next day.

My first inclination was to get angry at intolerant Muslims, but after some consideration, I realized that this is a problem best blamed on human nature.  I would like to think that Christians and/or Americans would be above this, but look at the recent furor about the Ground Zero Mosque.  I understand why the proposed mosque is considered a provocation, but the bottom line is that the American constitution enshrines religious freedom.  And it does that for very good reasons.

I'm concerned about an emerging pattern where Western states are mobilizing to block visible expressions of Islam, whether it's the Ground Zero Mosque or minarets in Switzerland.  Yes, I find it deeply hypocritical that Muslims want the West to grant them freedoms that are totally absent for religious minorities in Muslim countries.  But we shouldn't respond by doing the same thing in reverse; we need to do be better that.  We need to stand by our liberal principles and show the world an alternative to religious intolerance.  

I'm still angry about the vandalism of my church, but I'll be even angrier if the U.S. and other Western countries descend to the same level and lose their moral credibility.  I'd like to think our ideals really mean something and can serve as an example to the rest of the world.