Idolatry for Thee, Symbolism for Me – The Collapse of Monotheistic Moral Authority

Civilizations are ultimately judged not by how beautifully they speak about themselves, but by how they treat those who do not belong to them. By that standard, Judaism and Islam must be judged not as private faiths but as closed moral systems built on exclusive revelation, self-privileging law, and permanent inequality between believer and outsider. This is not an emotional claim. It is a doctrinal one. And doctrines, unlike feelings, are accountable to reason.

Both Judaism and Islam assert that truth is not discovered, tested, or negotiated, but revealed once and for all to a specific people through a specific channel. That revelation is not merely theological; it is juridical. It establishes who is fully human under the law and who exists on conditional terms. In classical Jewish law, the non-Jew—the goy—exists outside the covenant and therefore outside full moral reciprocity. In classical Islamic law, the non-Muslim—the kāfir or mushrik—occupies an inferior legal position, tolerated only through submission, tribute, or force. These are not distortions introduced by modern extremists. They are written structures.

One of the most revealing aspects of these systems is their treatment of idolatry. Judaism and Islam present themselves as radical opponents of idol worship, portraying it as the ultimate moral crime. Idolaters, in classical formulations, could be expelled, subjugated, or enslaved. The charge of idolatry was not a philosophical disagreement; it was a license for domination.

Yet both systems carve out striking exemptions for themselves.

Judaism condemns the worship of images and sacred objects—except when it comes to the Western Wall. There, kissing stone, weeping before it, inserting prayers into its cracks, and treating a physical structure as a conduit of divine presence are declared non-idolatrous by definition. The explanation is semantic: the Wall is not worshipped, it is merely a “reminder,” a “remnant,” a “symbol.” The behavior remains materially indistinguishable from practices Judaism condemns elsewhere, but the definition is self-protective.

Islam performs the same maneuver with the Kaaba and the Black Stone. Facing a cube five times a day, circumambulating it ritually, kissing or touching a sacred stone, and organizing the spiritual geography of the world around a single object would be textbook idolatry—if anyone else did it. But Islam exempts itself by intent. The object is not divine; obedience to command is the true act of worship. Again, the behavior is identical to what is condemned, but the definition shields the in-group.

This pattern matters because it exposes the real function of the idolatry charge. It is not about objects. It is about authority. “Idolatry” is whatever the Other does without our permission. “Symbolism” is whatever we do under revelation. The distinction is not logical; it is sovereign.

From the outside—where non-Jews and non-Muslims actually live—this destroys any claim to universal moral authority. A system that defines morality in a way that always exempts itself cannot demand obedience from those it judges. Universal ethics require universal standards. Self-exempting ethics are, by definition, tribal.

The danger appears when these doctrines are read literally and politically, as they are by fundamentalists. If outsiders are structurally inferior, if their worship is a crime, if their humanity is conditional, then violence is not an aberration. It is an activation. Slavery, conquest, forced submission, and terror are not deviations; they are dormant permissions waiting for power.

What, then, is the obligation of the goyim and the kuffār—the people explicitly named as outsiders in these systems?

Not conversion.
Not appeasement.
Not theological debate with those who deny equality by premise.
And not retaliatory violence, which only confirms the extremist narrative and destroys moral legitimacy.

The answer is refusal—calm, unapologetic, collective refusal to live under definitions that deny equal humanity.

Non-Jews and non-Muslims are morally justified in judging Judaism and Islam as closed systems whose historical and doctrinal treatment of outsiders disqualifies them from governing plural societies. They are justified in rejecting the authority of revelation over public law. They are justified in insisting that belief confers no legal privilege and that scripture grants no license to harm.

The response to the threat of fundamentalist violence is not flight, silence, or guilt. It is law. It is the uncompromising enforcement of civil order against anyone—Jewish, Muslim, or otherwise—who advocates slavery, terror, or coercion. It is individual accountability, not collective blame. It is the removal of religious exemptions from criminal conduct. It is the protection of victims without apology.

A civilization does not survive fanaticism by debating it on its own terms. It survives by making fanaticism operationally impossible. Arrests, prosecutions, financial disruption, prison, and social isolation are not acts of hatred. They are acts of self-defense by a plural order that refuses to die.

None of this requires hostility toward Jews or Muslims as people. It requires clarity about doctrines that divide humanity into masters and subjects. The moment a belief system denies equal dignity without conversion, it forfeits the right to rule anyone but its volunteers.

To say this is not extremism. It is restraint.

To refuse to live under definitions of truth, worship, or humanity that make you permanently lesser is not bigotry. It is dignity.

And dignity, once calmly asserted and legally defended, is stronger than any holy book read with a clenched fist.