Foreign Affairs: How the U.S. Promotes Extremism in the Name of Religious Freedom
America's Foreign Affairs edition has published an article titled 'How the U.S. Promotes Extremism in the Name of Religious Freedom' by Frederick Starr, Brenda Shaffer, and Svante Cornel.
According to the article, in its 2017 report, the commission (USCIRF) effectively supports the right of Islamist extremists to operate in several Muslim-majority countries, mullahs to spread radicalism abroad, and hardline Islamist organizations to receive foreign funding. It also castigates policies that promote secularism, such as bans on headscarves for girls in public schools. In its quest to protect freedom of religion, the USCIRF is championing the rights of groups that aspire to impose religious coercion on others.
-The USCIRF has also complained in its recent reports that public schools in Azerbaijan do not allow girls to cover their heads in school. It laments that cites the anti-headscarf directive from Azerbaijan’s minister of education as “repression of independent Muslims.” Yet the legislation in question is similar to laws in France and, until 2014, Turkey. In both of the latter cases, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the countries’ right to prohibit headscarves in school, under the reasoning that such restrictions to affirm secularism “may be considered necessary to protect the democratic system” and defend against “extremist political movements” that “seek to impose on society as a whole their religious symbols.” The USCIRF, however, rejects the court’s reasoning and continues to condemn laws that prevent the covering of girls’ heads. Although some parents object, countries that pass these laws justify their policies as part of the state’s obligation to provide girls with a full, non-segregated education. In the complicated question of parents’ religious rights versus the duty of government schools to protect young girls, Washington bureaucrats have little to add and would be better advised to let foreign states work out this question on their own.
One of Azerbaijan’s violations, in the commission’s view, is a 2015 law prohibiting foreign citizens from serving as clerics in the country—a law that exists for the sole purpose of preventing foreign radical clerics from preaching extremism. One wonders why the commission believes it is in the interest of the United States or the people of Azerbaijan to defend clerics from a theocratic, anti-American state that Washington considers a state sponsor of terrorism.
Various liberal democracies around the world have adopted differing models for separating church and state. A stark contrast exists, for instance, between the American and French models. The Muslim-majority states of Central Asia and Azerbaijan have adopted something close to the French model, which upholds public secularismandfocuses on defending the state and society from religious coercion. Thus, France and the states following its model limit the expression of religion in the public sphere. This model may seem harsh to Americans, who have never had to contend with a dominant religious authority and have been more concerned with securing freedom for their churches to operate than with protecting their citizens from religious coercion. Yet the USCIRF and other U.S. institutions that deal with religious freedom globally should be more tolerant of diversity in the various approaches to managing the relationship of church and state, and accept that different states with different historical challenges will adopt different models.
Finally, the USCIRF should focus more on carrots than on sticks. Instead of simply classifying and censuring U.S. partners, or demanding sanctions, it should focus on constructive steps that various agencies of the U.S. government could take in cooperation with these governments in order to address problems and improve governance with respect to religious freedom.
Article available online: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/central-asia/2017-08-24/how-us-promotes-extremism-name-religious-freedom
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