The new office of religious freedom

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister has named the government’s first ambassador for religious freedom. Here is the official biography for Andrew Bennett. And here is Mr. Harper’s response this afternoon when asked about whether the office would also concern itself with the freedom of atheists.

This is an office to promote religious toleration and religious diversity. And, in fact, as president Malik himself said, people who choose not to believe, that’s a valid religious and democratic perspective that we all must also accept and promote. We’re not trying to impose, we’re trying to respect peoples’ own religions, their own faith choices. Not impose those faith choices or non-faith choices on others. And so just as it is important that religion be respected in a pluralistic and democratic society by those who don’t share religion, it is likewise expected in a very religious society that those who don’t share faith will be respected as well.

Here is John Baird’s speech last year on the importance of religious freedom.

The New Democrats have responded with congratulations and a couple quibbles.

The Office of Religious Freedoms, as introduced today, represents both a broken Conservative promise and a missed opportunity. Conservatives had repeatedly promised a democratic development agency, but they broke that promise and now they’re moving forward on a much more limited and narrow approach.

That much is reference to the Conservative party’s 2008 platform, which promised a “new, non-partisan democracy promotion agency that will help emerging democracies build democratic institutions and support peaceful democratic change in repressive countries.”

Federal government to announce Religious Freedom Office

By The Canadian Press - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at 5:23 AM - 0 Comments

MAPLE, Ont. – The federal government is planning to announce its long-awaited Office of…

MAPLE, Ont. – The federal government is planning to announce its long-awaited Office of Religious Freedom in an event today at a mosque north of Toronto.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino, and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney are to make the announcement this afternoon at a mosque in Maple.

The announcement comes 22 months after the Tories first promised to create a modest, religious freedom branch within the Foreign Affairs Department.

The pledge was unveiled in the Conservative campaign platform during the last federal election, but Foreign Affairs has been unable to find a commissioner to take the job.

Human rights groups and opposition critics have said the office is a misguided attempt to inject religion into foreign policy.

They also question what exactly the new office can accomplish with a modest $5-million budget.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird won’t be on hand for the announcement because he’ll be in the middle of a six-country Latin American trip.

Baird has been involved in many high-level meetings with religious figures over the last 18 months.

His consultations have taken him to the Holy See in Rome, the Aga Khan, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Turkey and the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom.

The Tories have pointed to the fact that the U.S. State Department’s religious freedom office was created in the late 1990s under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton.
Constitutional lawyer: PQ Charter an empty fantasy

By The Canadian Press - Thursday, August 16, 2012 at 3:36 PM - 0 Comments

The law on religious wear wouldn’t survive a court challenge

CP

MONTREAL – A prominent constitutional lawyer says a plan by the Parti Quebecois to restrict certain religious symbols in public institutions would ultimately be shredded up in court.

He used the example of doctors with religious headwear and said that if they one day challenge the PQ proposal, they will win.

The PQ has proposed a Charter of Secularism that would forbid employees in public institutions from wearing overt religious symbols; the policy would not apply to necklaces, like the crucifix.

“Imagine the absurdity of saying that we have the best surgeon in Quebec, but he can’t operate in Quebec because he’s not permitted to wear his kippah, turban or scarf,” Grey said in an interview Thursday.

“I think a doctor would succeed — I think there’s no reason for a doctor not to wear a turban, kippah or scarf.”

Grey cited jurisprudence that could be used to knock down the PQ proposal, including the famous case of turbans in the RCMP.

He said any Quebec public servant who would launch a legal challenge would also be successful.

Continue…
‘Basic rights for all’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 25, 2012 at 11:44 AM - 0 Comments

Foreign Affairs has posted the text of John Baird’s speech in Washington yesterday on the topic of religious freedom.

Canada has a tradition that some in our country seemed to forget during the latter half of the last century: a tradition of standing for freedom and fundamental rights, a tradition of standing against oppression. We did so in the earliest days of World War II … And yet, after the Second World War, some decision makers lost sight of our proud tradition to do what is right and just. Some decided it would be better to paint Canada as a so-called honest broker. I call it being afraid to take a clear position… even when that’s what’s needed.

So I’m proud to say Canada no longer simply “goes along to get along” in the conduct of its foreign policy. We will stand for what is principled and just, regardless of whether it is popular, convenient or expedient. We do so as part of our commitment to basic rights for all.

Laura Payton notes that the event was sponsored by a church that opposes same-sex marriage and “homosexual practices.” Four months ago, Mr. Baird championed gay rights in a speech in London.

However much the ideas of religious freedom and gay rights are actually in conflict, here is how Hillary Clinton reconciled the two in a speech last December. Continue…
Four questions: Daniel C. Dennett on the most pervasive and serious threat religion poses to human rights

By Anouk Dey - Friday, February 24, 2012 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

‘It’s the practices that are on the boundaries of what is acceptable to people that raise interesting problems’

Daniel C. Dennett is the author of Breaking the Spell, Freedom Evolves, and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, among other works. He is also the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Q: What can Canada expect to achieve by promoting religious freedom abroad?

A: Religion has a track record of providing good things like hope, love, freedom, and morality in many places for many people. It is a very important part of their lives, and not for bad reasons. Many people around the world organize their lives around their religion. It’s their community, their friends, and their networking. And we don’t want to tamper with that unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s a wonderful thing for these people.

However, religions should not be allowed to have practices, no matter how traditional they are, that violate fundamental laws. Continue…
Four questions: Allen Hertzke on why Canada is better positioned than the U.S. to promote religious freedom

By Anouk Dey - Friday, February 24, 2012 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

And on the difference between protecting it at home and advancing it abroad

Allen Hertzke is an internationally recognized expert on religion and politics, and a Presidential Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of several books, including Representing Good In Washington, an award-winning analysis of religious lobbies; Echoes of Discontent, an account of church-rooted populist movements; and the co-author of Religion and Politics in America. His most recent book is Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights.

Q: What can Canada expect to achieve by promoting religious freedom abroad?

A: The question can best be answered by posing it in another way: What can Canada contribute by promoting religious freedom abroad? Continue…
Video: Tony Burman on why faith should be kept out of foreign policy

By Anouk Dey - Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Promoting religious freedom abroad is meant to appease a domestic constituency

Tony Burman is the former managing director of Al Jazeera English.

The New Missionaries is a joint project between Maclean’s and OpenCanada.org, the Canadian International Council’s (CIC) hub for international affairs. Click here to learn more about the CIC.
Video: Thomas Farr on why faith has a place in foreign policy

By Anouk Dey - Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Religious freedom is essential to stabilizing struggling democracies

Thomas Farr is the director of the Project on Religious Freedom at Georgetown’s Centre for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. He also contributes to the Washington Post‘s “On Faith” blog.

The New Missionaries is a joint project between Maclean’s and OpenCanada.org, the Canadian International Council’s (CIC) hub for international affairs. Click here to learn more about the CIC.
Infographic: Religious persecution around the world

By Brian Grim - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments

In one third of countries, the problem is getting worse

The New Missionaries is a joint project between Maclean’s and OpenCanada.org, the Canadian International Council’s (CIC) hub for international affairs. Click here to learn more about the CIC.

Brian Grim is the senior research fellow in religion and world affairs at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Graphic design by Cameron Tulk.
Promoting religious freedom is complicated: extreme caution advised

By Janet Keeping - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments

One has reason to doubt that the government is undertaking the careful thinking necessary

Protesters demonstrate in Los Angeles in 2008 against the Mormon Church's financial support of a bill banning gay marriage. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)

The New Missionaries is a joint project between Maclean’s and OpenCanada.org, the Canadian International Council’s (CIC) hub for international affairs. Click here to learn more about the CIC. To read Clifford Orwin’s defense of the Office of Religious Freedom, click here.

The promotion of freedom globally, if done peacefully—without invading armies, bombs, and the resulting carnage—can be a fine thing. But creating an Office of Religious Freedom, as the Canadian federal government is in the process of doing, may not be such a good idea. To test whether it is, there are three questions Canadians should insist be answered before the office starts its work.

First, is there a strategy in place for dealing with conflicts between religious freedom and the protection of other human rights? In Canada, we are quite clear: the oppression of women or vulnerable minorities will not be tolerated in the name of religious freedom. But how will the new Office of Religious Freedom respond when other human rights interfere with the rights claimed by religious groups in other countries, for example, to marry young girls off long before adulthood, or to impose rules that blatantly discriminate against women in religious courts, or to ban gays from places of worship? Continue…
Religious freedom does not mean freedom to practice illiberal religion

By Clifford Orwin - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments

To defend religious freedom no more implies its superiority to other human rights than to defend any such right

Indonesian Christians protest violence by Islamic hard-liners in Jakarta, Aug. 15, 2010. (Dita Alangkara/AP)

The New Missionaries is a joint project between Maclean’s and OpenCanada.org, the Canadian International Council’s (CIC) hub for international affairs. Click here to learn more about the CIC. To read Janet Keeping on why there’s reason to question the government’s motives for establishing the Office of Religious Freedom, click here.

In establishing an Office of Religious Freedom, the present government is not placing religious freedom above other human rights, for the simple reason that to do so is impossible. To think that religious freedom is liable to being placed above other human rights is to misunderstand what is meant by religious freedom (and therefore to misunderstand its relationship to these other rights).

To defend religious freedom no more implies its superiority to other human rights than to defend any such right implies its superiority to others. Properly understood (and there’s no reason to conclude that the present government understands it improperly) freedom of religion implies the other basic human rights. All are aspects of the autonomy of the individual, so to defend any is to defend that autonomy, and therefore (in principle) all the others. To establish an Office of Religious Freedom is therefore wholly without prejudice to any other human freedom.

Here the crucial point to grasp is that religious freedom has never meant freedom to practice illiberal religion (i.e. any religion that seeks to employ coercion, whether of its own adherents or others). You can’t persecute under the mantle of freedom from persecution, and it’s precisely freedom from religious persecution for which “religious freedom” is shorthand. In a clash of dogmatic and intolerant sects (of which there are still many in the world today), neither party can invoke the protection of the principle of religious freedom.

Nor, however, can any sect claim protection for practices that violate any human right, for any such violation amounts to illegitimate coercion on behalf of religion. The best way to understand religious freedom is precisely as freedom from such coercion.

From this, it follows that religious freedom equally protects the religious and the non-religious. The believer can no more coerce the atheist than the atheist can coerce the believer. I don’t fault the Harper government for not billing its new entity as the office for the Equal Protection of Believers and Non-Believers. However, to defend religious freedom is, in fact, to vindicate such equal protection. Who benefits from the purging of all coercion from the realm of religion? Obviously not only the religious.

There is, of course, one sense in which the establishment of an Office of Religious Freedom does “place religious freedom above other human rights,” but that sense is neither improper nor sinister. All governments choose their fights, and then their fights within their fights. For the Harper government to create such an office is not to turn its back on other human rights. It’s merely to indicate that it will focus a portion of its limited resources for international human rights promotion on issues of religious freedom.

Consider this decision as analogous to one to create an Office of Freedom of the Press or of Freedom of Assembly. Would either such decision have aroused such animus? Neither of these freedoms is less fundamental than freedom of religion, but neither is either of them more so. All belong in the bundle, as necessary aspects of the human autonomy that we mentioned at the beginning. All three freedoms, moreover, are subject to massive violation in many parts of the world today. All are in sore need of white knights to ride to their defence. All, indeed, are in need of far larger squadrons of these than Canadian diplomacy (and the new office with its limited budget) have to deploy. Is the Harper government then to be faulted for choosing to employ its few drops of influence in one bucket rather than many? Or for choosing the issue that is most likely to command the enthusiasm of a large fraction of its supporters? Not by me it isn’t.

Clifford Orwin is a professor of political science, classic and Jewish studies at the University of Toronto, as well as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
Debating the Office of Religious Freedom

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:34 PM - 0 Comments

Today we’re pleased to launch a new series debating the federal Conservatives’ plans for an Office of Religious Freedom at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Maclean’s is presenting this series in partnership with the Canadian International Council, a non-partisan, Canada-wide organization established to strengthen Canada’s foreign policy.

The debate we’re launching today concerns one of the most unusual items in the Conservatives’ 2011 election platform. Last year the party promised an Office of Religious Freedom to “promote religious freedom as a key objective of Canada’s foreign policy.” Nine months later, all signs indicate the government is set to launch this office. The cost is modest, $5 million, but the departure from the policies of previous governments is striking. And worth discussing. Continue…