US Gov. Commission: Freedom of religious minorities a security issue

Yezidis attacked in Sinjar province, Iraq, August 2007.

Persecution of, or discrimination against, religious minorities is a security issue for the USA, says the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom

The USCIRF has just published a report by Leonard A. Leo is (Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom) and Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou (Vice Chair of the USCIRF and an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University) called Protecting Religious Freedom Abroad. The highlights the oppression of religious minorities around the world (from Yezidis to Ahmadi Muslims), especially in the Middle East and Asia.


While this is welcome in itself, more interesting, perhaps, the authors of the report conclude that allowing minority religions to be oppressed poses a long term security threat to the US, since regimes that persecute, or facilitate the persecution of, minorities are unstable and volatile.

The violence that is cultivated within the borders of a nation state is liable to spill over them. Recall, for example, that the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan were blown six months before 9/11. Extracts follow:

An Overlooked Threat to Religious Freedom

There is, however, a second and equally egregious threat to religious freedom, which commonly occurs around the world, yet receives far less attention from policymakers, human rights activists, and scholars. The world caught a glimpse of this type of threat on March 3 of this year, when Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Minister for Minority Affairs, who was a Christian and a longtime champion of freedom of religion, was assassinated in Islamabad for opposing his country’s blasphemy law. Bhatti’s murder followed the assassination in January 2011, also in Islamabad, of another Pakistani government official, Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, a Muslim, for engaging in similar opposition.

The murders of Bhatti and Taseer signal how in many nations, significant religious freedom violations can be perpetrated just as easily by private actors as by governments. In such countries, the government fosters a climate conducive to these acts of violence. This environment -- ripe for violations of religious freedom -- is known as impunity.

How do states create an atmosphere of impunity, thereby emboldening private actors to commit violence against religious groups and individuals that they oppose? States are implicated in impunity in two related ways: first, through acts of commission and, second, by the failure to act, or omission.

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As in Pakistan, Indonesia has utilized its blasphemy law against Ahmadis. Coupled with a decree that permits discrimination against the Ahmadis, the law has fueled interreligious strife and unwittingly emboldened radical Islamist groups to engage in violence.

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Impunity Across the Globe

In Iraq, Mandaeans, Yazidis, Christians, and other vulnerable religious minorities face similar problems to those in Egypt, and the Iraqi government’s failure, either to protect its citizens against attacks or to bring the guilty to justice, has created a climate of impunity which endangers these minorities and clouds Iraq’s future as a diverse, pluralistic, and free society.

Since 2004, members of Iraq’s diverse minority communities have been kidnapped, raped, tortured, beheaded, and evicted from their homes. The experience of Christians is instructive. They have seen their churches repeatedly bombed. The worst single attack against Christians was launched on October 31, 2010, when an al Qaeda affiliate assaulted the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Baghdad, killing or wounding nearly all of the more than 100 worshippers at Sunday mass. Wijdan Michael, then Iraq’s human rights minister and a Christian, said that the goal of the perpetrators was “to empty Iraq of Christians.” Since 2004, there has been a mass exodus of Christians from Iraq, reducing its Christian community by more than half. Significant declines also have occurred among smaller religious minorities such as the Yazidis and Mandaeans, who have seen their numbers dwindle, mostly through emigration, from an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 in 2003 to only a few thousand today.

In Pakistan, the assassinations of Bhatti and Taseer underscore how the government has similarly failed to protect religious minorities--from Shi’a Muslims to Ahmadis (Ahmaddiyas) and Christians--from religiously-motivated violence, as well as to bring the perpetrators to justice. An atmosphere of impunity is fostered by laws, such as the anti-Ahmadi and blasphemy laws, that violate religious freedom directly and indirectly by energizing violent extremists who ultimately threaten the freedoms of all Pakistanis.

Impunity as a Threat to Global Security

In short, the US must realize that religious freedom is, unmistakably, a security issue.

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It is incumbent upon the United States to recognize that violations of religious freedom in these countries can and will have adverse effects on both national and international security.

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In Pakistan, for example, impunity is fueled by the partial infiltration of security and police forces by the ideology and practitioners of radicalized religion. In Nigeria, impunity is more a case of private actors from two competing and equally powerful religious communities helping prevent the machinery of government from grinding toward justice. Not only do these weaknesses lead to egregious violations of religious freedom, they also are capable of creating real crises of legitimacy for the affected governments. Simply put, states that either cause or fail to remedy impunity eventually lose the trust and confidence of a critical mass of their citizens. Depending on the country in question, this could well lead to a downward slide toward anarchy or tyranny. This grim prospect should concern not only their immediate neighbors, but also the United States and the world community.

Combating Impunity

First, the United States must call upon governments around the world to redouble efforts to protect their citizens, including religious minorities. Second, when attacks happen, the United States must urge these governments to hold the culprits accountable and be willing to sanction those governments that do not

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Equally important, the United States should urge governments to eliminate laws that provide a pretext for religiously-motivated violence. This includes laws targeting certain religious groups, either directly by restricting or banning their activities, or indirectly, through prohibitions on blasphemy and apostasy.

Efforts have been undertaken for years by the USCIRF, as well as by members of the U.S. Congress and executive branch, and by non-governmental human rights organizations, against the drive for a global blasphemy law. These efforts produced a significant victory on March 24th of this year, when the UNHRC adopted a resolution against religious intolerance that excluded the infamous “defamation-of-religions” language adopted in resolutions of prior years and, instead, used language that protects individuals from discrimination rather than religions from any criticism.

You can read the entire report here.