Religious Persecution as a U.S. Policy Issue
Rosalind Hackett, Mark Silk, Dennis Hoover, editors
Leonard Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, 2000
This monograph is an abridged and edited transcript of a Consultation held at Trinity College shortly after the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act (1998). It is available from http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/Religious%20Persecution/relperse.pdf.
Excerpt
"On September 26-27, 1999, the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, Hartford, hosted a Consultation to enable selected government officials, human rights professionals, representatives of religious organizations, religion scholars, lawyers, and journalists to explore the phenomenon of religious persecution around the world as it relates to this new official U.S. engagement in the issue. Previous conferences on religious persecution had tended to be limited in orientation and/or scope. Some viewed the subject from the standpoint of different religious traditions. Others focused on the need for interreligious dialogue-while excluding nonconventional religious groups that are often the principal objects of discrimination. Still others restricted themselves to a particular geographic region, subordinated religion to notions like "ethnic conflict," or looked solely at legal interpretations and implications. Rarely did participants try to look directly at the different understandings of the idea of religious persecution made in different parts of the world and in political, journalistic, academic, and religious circles.
"To say that those who attended the Hartford consultation brought different perspectives to the table is an understatement. The congressional authors of the International Religious Freedom Act prided themselves on crafting a piece of legislation that balanced the bully pulpit of moral exhortation with the exigencies of conducting foreign policy in a complicated world. Their academic critics took aim at the very idea of singling out religion for protection. Human rights activists worried about the effect of the new U.S. initiative on multilateral approaches to human rights around the world. By the end of the two days, the veneer of politeness had rubbed away and, as the reader will see, the participants were mixing it up with considerable vehemence. The heated debate should not, however, be allowed to obscure the fact that they all occupy the same side of the larger divide between those who support a human rights agenda for U.S. foreign policy and those who see that agenda as at best a loose cannon on the deck of the ship of state. At the consultation, no one spoke out on behalf of the interests of American capitalism or Realpolitik. This was, as it were, a debate among friends."
Table of Contents
Introduction
Participants
I. The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)
A View from Congress
John Hanford, Office of Senator Richard Lugar
Steve Moffitt, Office of Senator Don Nickles
Laura Bryant, Office of Representative Bob Clement
William Inboden, former aide to Representative Tom DeLay
Discussion
II. Religious Persecution in China and India
Mickey Spiegel, Human Rights Watch
Smita Narula, Human Rights Watch
Respondent,
Jay Demerath, Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Discussion
III. Religious Persecution in the Middle East and Sudan
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Emory University Law School
Jemera Rone, Human Rights Watch
Respondent,
Rosalind I. J. Hackett, Department of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee
Discussion
IV. Religious Persecution in Europe
Willy Fautré, Human Rights Without Frontiers
Stephen A. Kent, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta
Respondent,
W. Cole Durham, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University
V. Religious Persecution and U.S. Foreign Policy
Lee Boothby, President, International Association for Freedom of Conscience
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Department of Religion, Washington and Lee University
Respondents,
T. Jeremy Gunn, Director of Research, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
Tom Farr, Director, Office of International Religious Freedom, U.S. Department of State
VI. General Discussion