David QuinnPersecution of religion is still not getting the attention it deserves, writes David Quinn
Every year the US State Department issues a report on religious freedom. The latest one was issued last week. Look it up and you’ll find a short section on Ireland. The section is lazy and under-researched.
Thus, for example, it has a few paragraphs on whether children from non-religious or minority religious backgrounds are discriminated against in our schools. It finds one or two isolated examples, but for the most part gives our schools a reasonably clean bill of health.
It notes in a neutral way that there is a proposal to replace our blasphemy law “with a new provision that would make incitement to religious hatred an offense”.
It reports one or two anti-Semitic incidents, for example, the sending of anti-Semitic material to Alan Shatter, or the participation of anti-Semitic elements in an anti-Israeli demonstration last year.
In order to compile the Ireland report, “US embassy officials met with the Government to discuss issues related to integration of religious minorities into the community and discrimination against them. Embassy representatives also met with religious groups and NGOs to discuss how different religious groups are treated in Ireland and what issues these groups face in practicing their religion”.
Controversy
The researchers should have thrown their net wider. I could have shown them, for example, the sort of anti-Catholic screeds that sometimes cross my desk, especially when some public controversy about the Catholic Church has erupted again. I’m sure many bishops and other prominent Catholic laity could do the same.
Much more importantly, the section displays a huge blind spot about the issue of conscientious objection here, whether for individuals or institutions.
Under the so-called Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act of 2013, for example, all hospitals are required to perform abortions under its terms, like it or not, and that includes Catholic hospitals. This is a very strong attack on religious freedom.
And as in most parts of America, no protection is given to Christian-run businesses such as florists, printers or bakers that are asked to serve a same-sex wedding but do not wish to do so because they don’t believe in same-sex marriage. This issue, too, is completely ignored.
You would have thought the report would at least mention the issue and note that some people are concerned about it, even if the report itself remained neutral on the merits or demerits of conscience clauses in these circumstances.
The State Department report throws the net far wider than the Western World, fortunately, and it does a good job highlighting the horrendous attacks being carried out on religious believers in other parts of the world, sometimes at the hands of religious extremists, and sometimes at the hands of militantly secular regimes such as North Korea, and to a lesser extent in China or Vietnam.
In fact, the State Department report came out during the same week that Aid to the Church in Need issued its biennial report on the persecution of Christians around the world. It focussed on 20 countries, including some of the worst offenders in the Middle East.
The report is called Persecuted and Forgotten? A report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2013-2015.
Its main findings include: “The Church’s survival in parts of Africa and the Middle East are threatened by religiously motivated ethnic cleansing by extremist Islamist groups; the Church is being driven out of its ancient biblical heartland thanks to a massive exodus – Christianity is on course to disappear from Iraq potentially within five years; totalitarian regimes such as those in China and North Korea have put Christians under pressure due to the perception that Christianity is linked to the west, seen as corrupt and exploitative by communist states.”
Vulnerable
In both the Aid to the Church in Need report and the State Department report we find specific examples of the kind of persecution being suffered by Christians and other vulnerable groups.
The State Department describes how the Christian community was forced out of the Iraqi city of Mosul last year having lived there for centuries.
One incident as they fled is described as follows: “Three-year old Christina Khader Ebada boarded a crowded bus with her mother to leave when suddenly one of the [ISIS] fighters guarding the checkpoint tore Christina from her mother’s arms. The panicked mother followed him, pleading with him to return the girl. ‘Shut up,’ he responded. ‘If you come close to this little girl you will be slaughtered; we will slaughter you.’ And she was forced back on the bus, leaving her baby behind, never to know what became of her.”
This is far from the worst example. Christians are being killed, sometimes crucified for their faith in numbers rarely seen before.
It goes without saying that what is happening to Christians in places like Nigeria, Iraq, Syria and North Korea is vastly worse than the comparatively ‘trivial’ restrictions being placed on religious practice in the west.
But to go from this to suggesting we should not worry about conscience rights in this part of the world is a bit like saying we should not worry about any human rights issues in the west because virtually all of them pale into insignificance when compared with what is happening in say, North Korea.
Categories
When thinking about religious freedom we really need to think about it in two categories. The first, and worst, is outright persecution of the sort that seeks to kill religious believers and outright ban their religion or place very heavy restrictions upon it.
The second, lesser kind, which we are encountering in the west, seeks to reduce freedom of religion to freedom of worship by placing restrictions on our ability to practice our religion in certain circumstances, for example, the right of a Catholic hospital to refuse to perform direct abortions, or the right of a Christian printer to say he will not produce pro-gay marriage literature.
Religious freedom of any kind is, however, little covered in the western media, because most of the western media is either hostile or tone deaf towards religion. That makes a bad situation even worse because it means the wider public barely know what is going on.