Shortly after the completion of the final revisions to this book, a front-page article appeared in the Austrian newspaper Die Presse reporting estimates of some 250 million Christians worldwide threatened by violence or death for their beliefs. Most of the countries where this repression is taking place are not democracies – for example, Iran, Vietnam, China. Some countries such as India and Turkey are certainly democracies, but cannot be called liberal democracies because of the violations of religious freedom rights that occur within them. These instances of religious persecution illustrate a major theme of this book – the incompatibility of strong religious views and liberal democracy.

Most of the countries in which religious persecution is taking place can be characterized as nonmodern, traditionalist societies – for example, Pakistan, Burma, Yemen, Kenya. Traditionalism and religion go hand in hand, as does to a large extent traditionalism and dictatorship. The examples of India and Turkey indicate, however, that democracy is no guarantee of liberalism. Wherever extremist religious beliefs exist, liberalism is at peril. It was the growing importance of religious extremism in the United States, South America, the Middle East, and other parts of the world and the potential for religious extremism to arise even in Europe that led me to write this book. No one who values liberalism and democracy should assume that they are invulnerable to attack from religious extremists.