Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.

Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.

People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, and the heart, and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways. […] Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.

Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.

No compulsion in religion’ (2:256) was a Qur'anic command revealed in Medina when a child from one of the Muslim families who had been educated in the town's Jewish schools decided to depart with the Jewish tribe being expelled from Medina. His distraught parents were told by God and the Prophet in this verse that they could not compel their son to stay. The verse, however, has been understood over the centuries as a general command that people cannot be forced to convert to Islam.

It's long been a point of mine that the freedom of religion, which this country alleges to support, works two ways. We're not only free to practice the religion of our choice, we should be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.

We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of their country.

How does a person separate true, personal religion from a religion of conformity? Christianity is not really as white and wealthy and judgmental as we might want it to be.

Go into your places of worship, believe, affirm, pray. What I demand is liberty, an equal liberty for you and for me, for my philosophy and for your religious beliefs. We are not the foes of religion; we want to see it set on a firm basis, free and inviolable.

The deserved, necessary and respectful welcome of people who practice other faiths and religions does not mean offering them space for prayers inside churches designed for liturgy and the gathering of Christian communities. They can very well find other spaces and places.

Zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishment or modes of worship.

Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.

Blessed the man whose faith is different
from possessiveness - of a kind not framed by 'things which do appear' ( Hebrews 11:3)