Does anyone agree it is quite ironic for a Christian expect people to tolerate their controversial beliefs (i.e. against gay marriage) which is in accord with scripture, but feel it's OK to tell Muslims to ignore the commands of their own religion which offend us and then call them 'good Muslims'? In the world's point of view, 'good Christians' are people who teach universalism, gay marriage, promiscuity, etc. even though it's not biblical. Christians expecting secular governments to tolerate their more offensive beliefs and not tolerating those of radical Islam that are out of line with what is expected of its followers means the government should be allowed to declare religion acceptable only if it has a compromise with its religious orthodoxy.
There are at least two underlying assumptions behind your question which would need to be dealt with before a sensible answer is possible. (1) Who decides whether a 'belief' is controversial? Christians find some Muslim's, Hindu's, Buddhist's etc. 'beliefs' controversial and other's find some beliefs of some Christians controversial but other beliefs of other Christians not controversial. It has very little to do with 'orthodoxy' because that is merely a position or interpretation that has been imposed by a dominant group within a group, in agreement among themselves. Thus we have Shia and Sunni 'orthodoxy', Roman Catholic and Protestant 'orthodoxy', Zen, Shinto, Bahai, Seventh Day Adventist and Mormon 'orthodoxy' etc. etc. The only one which seems inapplicable would be Atheist 'orthodoxy' since they each have their own view and they have no hierarchy of authority. As to Christian Orthodoxy, that is by no means universal either and was derived by a long historical process and is probably quite different than whatever Jesus Christ himself would recognise as his own 'orthodox' view on what should be the attitude and behaviour of a 'loyal' follower of his teaching. So both 'orthodox' and 'libertarian' beliefs can be truly 'controversial' and just being 'controversial' or 'Liberal' does not necessarily mean 'wrong'. Jesus Christ held many views that others found extremely 'controversial'. He also held equally extremely 'liberal' views on some matters, which other's found scandalously 'controversial' and dangerously subversive of the values of his own society and 'government', at that time. (2) The problem with this is that there are no purely 'secular' governments, neither are there any purely 'orthodox' religions. All governments are made up of persons, with differing religious, secular or whatever 'opinions', and all religions are also made up of people holding slightly differing 'views'. The type of government or religion you actually get depends on the majority of 'similar opinions and views'. So you have hit upon a pretty intractable and unsolvable conundrum here, I think.
This is a classic Marxist argument where 'everything revolves around power' The Christian position is that truth is truth even if no one around you believes it; falsehood is false even if everyone around you believes it
But 'orthodoxy' is determined by those who win the arguments and carry the day with the votes. The winning party then deletes the losing party's arguments from history and 'Hey Presto' orthodoxy is established. It may well be also true, but nonetheless 'established' by weight of numbers. The fact is we simply don't know what some of 'the heretics' actually wrote, said and believed, we only have refutations of what they actually said, written by those who opposed them and who later destroyed the evidence of their opposition's supposedly heretical assertions.
Do you think that if the Holy Spirit working in history has the power to preserve the scriptures and all sufficient evidence to prove the truth of Christianity, that he would not show some favor in giving the 'heretics' a voice to show that their 'oppressors' were wrong? That doesn't make sense and makes it sound like everything is at the mercy ultimately of man and God is so weak he cannot protect these writings from being lost or would misrepresent people in history who had something important to say.
Are you saying that God has or would suppress everything that contradicts the truth? (Q.) How come then that there are lies and liars. (A.) Because God is gracious. What we have in scripture is not necessarily all the truth that was or is available. It is merely sufficient truth to fulfill God's purposes for mankind regarding knowledge of salvation. There may even be one or two passages in there that are deliberately included to test whether we are listening properly to hear God's view of things, or whether we are simply using scripture to impose our own godless prejudices on others. Pelagius is a good example of how 'orthodoxy' was able to label 'heretics', then suppress the truth by destroying the works they had produced, excusing 'orthodoxy' for the destruction of the evidence. Orthodoxy in the wrong hands can become merely a means to an end. The end being position, wealth, power, prestige and the right to be acclaimed to be, right. Meanwhile the truth marches on and all of it will eventually be shouted from the rooftops to be known by all. Matt.10:27, Lk.12:3.
Yeah, no, I'm going to ignore the new heretical garbage Tiffy is spouting now, so to answer your original question BibleHoarder, Are you asking why should Christian clamor for toleration of their controversial beliefs but oppose the toleration of the Muslim controversial beliefs (pedophilia etc)? Or, are you saying that it's funny how the secular world insists that we embrace traditional Islam while demanding that we abandon traditional Christianity?
Those are good but Christians think that anything that can be argued as 'good' apart from the actual faith itself will always be acknowledged or accepted as such by the secular world. We are putting our hope in the wrong people if we think this is the case.
This is basically slowly realizing that liberalism (in the classical sense) trying to the neutral arbiter of competing visions of the common good often breaks down. Frankly there are times I think I'd rather live under the Ottomans than whatever western secular liberalism will look like in 40 years.