Leadership Quote by Bob Inglis

Conversion is the stress test that exposes whether “religious freedom” is a lived right or a polite slogan. Bob Inglis’s line isn’t trying to defend comfortable, majority faith expression - church on Sunday, holidays on the calendar. It insists on the messier liberty that actually costs something: the ability to change your mind, publicly, and switch allegiances without being punished by the state or by social coercion disguised as tradition.

The phrasing does quiet but strategic work. “Fundamental” is doing constitutional heavy lifting, elevating conversion from a private spiritual choice to the keystone that holds the whole arch together. If you can’t convert, then religion becomes an inherited status, closer to caste than conscience. And if the only “freedom” on offer is the freedom to stay put, that’s not liberty - that’s managed pluralism, where diversity is tolerated so long as it doesn’t move.

As a politician, Inglis is also speaking into a specific set of fights: anti-conversion laws, blasphemy regimes, and nationalist projects that treat conversion as betrayal or foreign infiltration. His subtext is a rebuke to governments that claim to protect harmony while criminalizing persuasion, interfaith marriage, or minority growth. It’s also a warning to religious majorities in democracies: once you accept the state policing conversion “for your side,” you’ve invited the same machinery to be used against you when power shifts.

The line works because it reframes conversion not as provocation but as proof of agency - the one religious act that no one can fake on your behalf.