We’re fixated on the impossible. And for no good reason.

This pretence that we need to “respect other people’s religions” is likely doing more harm than good.

Forcing a firm believer of one religion to bow to the rest is like trying to jam the square block into the triangle hole.

In a recent Toronto Star series on religion and politics in our time, columnist Rick Salutin acknowledges religions appear like “zones of conflict waiting to explode on contact.”

The history books agree. But Salutin thinks this isn’t inevitable and a little multi-faith lovin’ is the cure:

“My point is, we should be grateful that religions like Islam are potentially transformable. If they weren't, then all the hopes for a postsecular society - where multiple religious and other voices treat one another respectfully - would be dashed, and irresoluble religious strife would be not only our past but our future.”

Such an audacious hope! I’ll let someone else volunteer their daughters and gay friends for this grand experiment in “potentially” transforming Islam.

Salutin adds: “Why won't religions like Islam simply fade away, removing all those risks they involve? It's partly due to what you could call an innate religious impulse - a drive to seek and find larger meanings.”

No quibble there. But why should everyone else have to change to fit the demands of various religions?

The headline of the piece speaks of “learning to live with Islam.” But why can’t the onus be placed on Islam – or any other religion – to be the one to learn to live with others?

This idea of multi-faith kumbaya is a crock if it means I’ve got to meet someone in a middle that looks eerily like a no-man’s land.

It’s like the eloquent Muslim reader who recently e-mailed me to say he thought there should be some degree of punishment in Canada for anyone who draws cartoons of Mohammed. Not meeting in the middle on that one folks. No room for negotiation there.

It seems most Canadians felt the same way when they read the story of the York University student of undisclosed religion who didn’t want to interact with female students. He was in the wrong. Full stop.

In 1993 Samuel Huntington predicted the world would move from conflicts based on differences of country to differences of culture – a clash of civilizations. The worst offender? “Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among people.”

If you think your god is the one and only god, well then you certainly don’t think the other guy’s is. Which means you likely don’t respect him for joining the wrong team. Nor should you. You wouldn’t be a very good believer if you did.

And guess what? That’s OK. The multi-faith crowd don’t want you to know this, but we were never meant to “respect” each others' religions. We’re simply meant to tolerate them. Two starkly different approaches.

English philosopher John Locke’s 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration was about those who “persecute, torment, destroy, and kill other men upon pretence of religion.”

It was about not assaulting people for their beliefs. (The West has finally figured this out. The Rest? Not so much).

The group hug of mutual respect never entered the equation. Nor should it. It confuses the public square with the private sphere.

There’s something deeply immature about the whole multi-faith scene. It’s like that needy kid in junior high who just can’t fathom why he’s not absolutely loved by everyone.

To paraphrase Walt Whitman, does humanity conflict with itself? Very well. It’s large. It contains multitudes.