It seems to me that there is no political ideology on offer in the West that is more deserving of Muslim support than libertarianism. Libertarians believe that each of us ‘owns’ our own lives and property; that we have the right to do whatever we wish with either provided we also respect the rights of others to do as they wish. As such, libertarianism guarantees Muslim minorities the right to worship, dress, speak and believe as we wish and protects these rights from the interference of the State and other citizens. Pick an issue from the last few years — calls for niqab to be banned, the banning of particular books, calls for sermons in mosques to be monitored, the introduction of sedition laws, interference in the religious curriculum of Muslim schools, and so on — and the libertarian position falls clearly on the Muslim side of the argument.
It is also the only ideology that, with its emphasis on small government and minimal taxes, would put an end to the multiculturalist pork barreling that has nurtured an unproductive growing class of tax-eating Muslim ‘leaders’. In recent years, we’ve seen a conga line of Muslims emerge with their self-serving pseudo-research and demands for more and more money to be poured into their projects and causes; projects that are more often designed to meet the political objectives of the State than any genuine need in the Muslim community. For example, we’ve had people paint the Muslim youth as drug-addled, dangerous time bombs whose fuses can only be extinguished by more public money; and we’ve seen malleable Muslims handpicked by the State, placed on government committees and publicly-funded ‘reference groups’ and then used by the government to promote its agenda.
Muslims, like other religious minorities and communities, appear to me to be a natural constituency for libertarian politics. But where are the Muslim libertarians? Likewise, why haven’t the various libertarian parties in the West done more to appeal to Muslims (or indeed other religious minorities), demonstrating how their policies would benefit these communities?