An Important Anniversary
Joseph Loconte
Earlier this week President Bush marked the tenth anniversary of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), the legislation that authorizes U.S. sanctions against governments that violate international protections for religious liberty. The law established the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and mandates that the State Department monitor religious liberty in every nation and identify the worst offenders. Also this week, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus Task Force for International Religious Freedom (TIRF) is holding a conference to celebrate the International Religious Freedom Act and discuss its ongoing importance in U.S. foreign policy.
In his White House remarks, the President singled out countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Sudan for their policies of religious persecution. To his credit, President Bush didn’t shy away from criticism of China and its ongoing crackdown against “house church” Protestants and human-rights lawyers such as Li Baiguang. (Bush’s White House meeting last month with Li Baiguang infuriated the regime.) “My message to President Hu Jintao, when I last met him, was this: So long as there are those who want to fight for their liberty, the United States stands with them.”
Nevertheless, governments considered “allies” in the U.S.-led war on radical Islam, such as Pakistan, don’t receive much criticism, either from the White House or from the State Department. The president briefly mentioned Saudi Arabia, where “religious police continue to harass non-Muslims.” But that’s a footnote in that country’s appalling record of repression, whose oil-soaked thug-ocracy promotes a culture of religious fanaticism, tyranny, and violent anti-Semitism. See this PDF report from the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
Initially opposed by liberal politicians and some human rights groups, IRFA is widely praised as an important part of America’s democracy-promotion efforts. That said, a presidential speech writer got a bit carried away with this formulation, which somehow made it into the president’s remarks: “The Act has placed religious liberty where it belongs—at the center of U.S. foreign policy.” That kind of rhetorical overkill doesn’t serve the Administration well; it merely sets up America’s friends for another rude disappointment. The unpleasant truth, as Tom Farr observed recently in Foreign Affairs, is that religious liberty is nowhere near the murky epicenter of U.S. foreign policy. “The United States is a religious nation,” Farr writes, “but neither scholars of U.S. foreign policy nor its practitioners have taken religion very seriously.”
As we are learning, however, a democracy and human rights agenda that fails to take religion seriously will fail to secure a foundation for genuine democracy and human rights.
Fodder, Religious Liberty, Thu 17 Jul 2008
