Wanting freedom isn’t enough to make it happen.

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President Obama recently committed America’s support for freedom movements throughout the Middle East. “We have a chance to pursue the world as it should be.” he said, and committed to support those pursuing freedom throughout the Arab world.

Sounds great, but who decides the way the world should be? According to Vishal Mangalwadi, India’s foremost Christian thinker, “The secular intelligentsia in America… does not understand America’s own secret [to freedom] and therefore is not able to help the Arab states… the Muslim world has not been able to create freedom from within its own intellectual resources… no Muslim nation in 1300 years has been able to create and sustain a free society. The Protestant West became free because people were seeking the Kingdom of God.”

He’s right. Revolutions don’t bring freedom. Freedom requires seeing humans as created equal and possessing inherent rights. These ideas make sense through the lens of Christianity, but not through the lens of secularism or Islam.

This commentary originally aired on June 1, 2011.

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Further Reading Christian Scholar: Obama Offered 'Waterless Cloud' to the Middle East Michelle A. Vu | The Christian Post | May 20, 2011 The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success Rodney Stark | The Colson Center Bookstore