>When you say freedom of religion, you don't mean complete freedom. What if my religion states that I shouldn't pay taxes? Obviously this religion would not be

>When you say freedom of religion, you don't mean complete freedom. What if my religion states that I shouldn't pay taxes? Obviously this religion would not be tolerated. That's why we have laws which define the boundaries and interactions between the freedoms of society's members. It's not useful or practical to define freedom in any other context (i.e., that in nature, outside of society), because there would be no conflicts in that case. Freedom can only really be discussed in terms of social relations. But these are issues that U.S. courts have had quite a lot to say about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_the_Unit... And the situation with Islam today certainly has historical precedents: Anti-Catholicism was widespread in the 1920s; anti-Catholics, including the Ku Klux Klan, believed that Catholicism was incompatible with democracy and that parochial schools encouraged separatism and kept Catholics from becoming loyal Americans. The Catholics responded to such prejudices by repeatedly asserting their rights as American citizens and by arguing that they, not the nativists (anti-Catholics), were true patriots since they believed in the right to freedom of religion.