Earlier this week, The Veritas Forum at Columbia University hosted a forum entitled Democracy, Terrorism, and Religious Freedom. Chris Seiple, the President of the Institute for Global Engagement and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations based in New York, along with Alfred Stepan, the Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion at Columbia University, conversed with each other and took questions from an audience of students about how best to deal with nations of different faiths.

Here are some of the highlights:

Two Birds with One Stone: Religious freedom is a source of social stability.

The First Principle Proselytizing: First, know your own faith and know your neighbor's faith. When Western evangelicals began sending missionaries into the former Soviet Union, Orthodox Christian clergy felt their centuries-long influence threatened by an flood of evangelizing Westerners. Eventually, the government was able create an ally for itself in the Orthodox Church which helped push back against Western influences.

The Boogeyman Idea: During the last century, it was communism. Now, Islam is in danger of being turned into the next boogeyman. China too should not be viewed as a competitor. The United States always seems to "need a monolith," a big-bad boogeyman, if you will, to direct its foreign policy objectives. Interestingly, Christianity is growing faster among the elite rather than the poor in China. A top-down religious effect may eventually help Sino-American relations. With respect to Islam, the best way to engage Muslim nations is perhaps a respectful laissez-faire approach. The Eastern intellectuals are beginning to rethink their religious attitudes and how they view the West. We, as Westerners, should simply let them undergo this rethinking independently, and we should not call it a "reformation" because calling it that would just be an insult to them and worsen relations.