Should the U.S. government employ American civil society to engage religious communities overseas in promotion of a “religious freedom agenda”? Scott Appleby, the Chicago Council’s Task Force Report (TFR), and the Obama administration think so. But there are serious problems with NGOs playing this role, either as an express supplement to, or possibly a covert screen for, U.S. foreign policy. First, it is worth emphasizing a point that might be lost in proposing such a “new” approach: civil society has autonomously done this for centuries. Beyond missionary groups’ traditional activities, both religious and secular NGOs have long engaged with overseas communities on political issues related to religion. Witness generations-old activism over foot-binding in China, female genital cutting in Kenya, and freedom of belief around the world.
Posts Tagged ‘international affairs’
Religious peacemaking in a secular world: an interview with Andrea Bartoli
posted by Nathan Schneider
Andrea Bartoli is currently director of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. He also directs U.S. activities for the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Roman Catholic lay organization that has led successful peacebuilding efforts in conflict areas around the world.
AB: Our own motivations aside, I would say that Sant’Egidio operates in a totally secular context. The world in which we live, after all, is fundamentally secularized. … Even those who try to build a theocracy in Iran or a Jewish state in Israel recognize the need to acknowledge some kind of secular universality. In whatever form you try to get there, you have to allow for the kind of human rights elaborated after World War II. Without them, you end up having all the anguishes that we see around the world when political structures are not capable of representing the interests of all of their citizens. Sant’Egidio sees itself as a creative minority, not as a Christian majority, and it appreciates what the secular state has to offer religious communities.
Words for a faithful world
posted by Chris SeipleWhat fascinates me most about these religious freedom conversations—within the U.S. and between America and the world—are the words we use. Some words, even with the very best of intentions, mean very different things to different audiences. Assuming we have been careful about our diction, what “we” say nevertheless is often not what “they” hear, and vice-versa. For example, I don’t like the term “secularism.” It rings of laïcité, which perhaps works for the French, but is certainly not germane to the American experience. Meanwhile, for my Muslim friends, “secularism” suggests a godless society—something inconceivable to them, and, for that matter, to me. … Here’s another term that is more complicated than it seems: “Cairo Speech.” I was in Pakistan recently, and a thoughtful person told me that he was tired of Cairo speeches. Between Condoleezza Rice’s speech there in 2005, which I had forgotten about, and Barack Obama’s speech in 2009, nothing had fundamentally changed.
Prominent Pakistani cleric condemns political violence
posted by Charles GelmanJohn Esposito reports at On Faith that Muhammad Tahir Qadri, an influential Pakistani cleric, has “issued a 600-page fatwa, described as an ‘absolute’ condemnation of terrorism without ‘any excuses or pretexts.’ He declared that terrorists and suicide bombers were unbelievers and that ‘Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses or ifs or buts.’”
The wages of engagement
posted by Michael Barnett“Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy” is an ambitious, thoughtful, and thought-provoking report that makes for necessary reading. Public discussions of religion are always difficult, and any attempt to forge a path for the United States to engage religion in world affairs is destined to leave controversy in its wake. Accordingly, the authors deserve considerable credit for confronting a cluster of hot-button issues—and, moreover, for doing so through a comprehensive and wide-ranging dialogue that included a broad spectrum of opinions. This report should be debated and discussed, not necessarily because it answers the difficult questions to everyone’s satisfaction, but rather because it confronts the difficult questions and tries, with honesty and integrity, to propose possible solutions. I was a member of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Task Force on Religion and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy that informed the report, and, while I proudly associate myself with it, there are two issues that worry me.
The ethics of proselytism
posted by Nathan SchneiderAt On Faith this week, “the question” is whether religious groups proselytizing overseas amounts to “religious freedom” or to “coercion.”
Beware the unstated assumptions
posted by Allen HertzkeI applaud the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ call for the U.S. government to recognize the pivotal role of religion in societies around the world and to engage religious communities in pursuit of American foreign policy objectives. The Council’s Task Force on Religion and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy wisely recommends mandating diplomatic training in religious literacy to address the striking ignorance that often leads to foreign policy blunders and missed opportunities. The tensions within the Task Force, which Scott Appleby recounts, actually illustrate the misconceptions that bedevil what, by law and interest, should be a central thrust of engagement: the promotion of religious freedom as a universal human right. As one who closely observed the process that produced the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, I can counter a number of such misconceptions.
On the role of religion in U.S. foreign policy
posted by Rebecca SagerSince the release last week of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ detailed and lengthy report (pdf) on the state of US engagement with religious communities at large, and its religious freedom agenda more broadly, there has been a sharp increase in attention to the role of religion in US foreign policy. The report itself argues that, because of the officially secular nature of US foreign relations, the government has failed to make connections with many countries in which the boundary between religion and affairs of state does not exist as such.
“Good Intentions” alone are not good enough!
posted by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`imAs I see it, the issue with “religious freedom” is not whether it should be upheld everywhere, but how and by whom. While I am in agreement with some of what Scott Appleby says of the Task Force Report of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, I would challenge some of the conclusions and recommendations of the report as presented by Appleby, without going into discussion of the Report itself. The premise of my comments is that the government of the United States does have a pivotal role in upholding all human rights—not only freedom of religion—through all facets of its own foreign policy. But it should do so as a participant in a global joint-venture, instead of assuming the “White Man’s burden” of civilizing the rest of humanity. Religious freedom can neither be advanced in isolation of other fundamental human rights nor sustained by imperial imposition.
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