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As Persecution Of Christians Intensifies, Freedom Of Thought Is At Risk

Jerusalem in Christmas lights

Jerusalem in Christmas lights (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Much of the world has just celebrated the most sacred Christian holiday, yet persecution of Christians has never been fiercer, especially in the Middle East.  The birthplace of Christianity threatens to become a land without Christians.

Other faiths also suffer varying degrees of persecution—Jews, Hindus, Bahai’s, and Muslims, the latter sometimes even in Muslim countries.  However, nonbelievers also are often mistreated.  The lack of religious belief is less likely to be punished by communist and former communist regimes which discourage, often violently, competing transcendent world views.  But such systems punish almost all independent thought in politics and elsewhere for being, well, independent.  Moreover, atheists and other freethinkers are particularly at risk in theocratic systems, and especially aggressively Muslim states.  The International Humanist and Ethical Union recently published its second annual report, Freedom of Thought 2013:  A Global Report on the Rights, Legal Status, and Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists, and the Non-religious.

America’s Founders enshrined religious liberty in the U.S. Constitution because they understood the imperative of freedom of conscience and thought, and the necessity of every person to respond to their understanding of the transcendent.  Although the latter most often is reflected in theism embodied by the major global religions, a failure to believe is no less fundamental.  And punishing a lack of belief is as great a violation of conscience and the very essence of the human person as persecuting someone for holding religious convictions.

The two sides of religious liberty are, in many ways, the canary in the mine for individual freedom.  If a state is unwilling to respect a person’s most fundamental and intimate views, his or her Weltanschauung, the foundational beliefs which govern his or her life, then government is unlikely to respect other beliefs, including dissident political opinions.  And if it refuses to leave people alone in their beliefs, it is unlikely to leave them free to act.  Argued IHEU, “when thought is a crime, no other freedom can long survive.”

Freedom of Thought 2013 addresses the status of the non-religious—“whether they call themselves atheists, or agnostics, or humanists, or freethinkers or are otherwise just simply not religious.” The report cites a 2012 global survey in which 13 percent of people declared themselves to be atheists and another 23 percent said they were not religious.  Non-belief, like belief, cannot be privatized. Instead, the failure to believe implicates a variety of liberties:  assembly, association, belief, conscience, expression, religion, and thought.  Fundamental to most beliefs is both sharing them with others and acting on them in one’s own life.

Unfortunately, governments routinely violate the liberty not to believe.  Concluded IHEU:  “the overwhelming majority of countries fail to respect the rights of atheists and freethinkers.  There are laws that deny atheists’ right to exist, revoke their right to citizenship, restrict their right to marry, obstruct their access to public education, prohibit them from holding public office, prevent them from working for the state, criminalize their criticism of religion, and execute them for leaving the religion of their parents.”  At stake is not just occasional inconvenience, but sometimes life itself.

Restrictions are many.  “In some countries, it is illegal to be an atheist.  For example, every citizen of the Maldives is required to be a Muslim and the penalty for leaving Islam is death.”  IHEU figures that “in effect you can be put to death for expressing atheism in 13 countries,” all Muslim.

More common, according to the report, “are the criminal measures against expressing atheist beliefs.”  The toughest punishments, including death, are applied to “blasphemy laws that outlaw criticism of protected religions or religious figures and institutions.”  Pakistan implemented its blasphemy law in 1988 and has prosecuted more than 1000 people of very different beliefs.  Lesser penalties attach to “hate speech” and other commentary.  According to Freedom of Thought 2013:  “These crimes—of expressing ‘blasphemy’ or offending religious feelings—are still a crime in 55 countries, can mean prison in 39 of those countries, and are punishable by death in six countries.”  So-called blasphemy also can be used as evidence of apostasy, which is more likely to carry the death penalty.

Persecution often fades into discrimination, less virulent but still offensive to basic human rights. Noted IHEU:  “Other laws that severely affect those who reject religion include bans on atheists holding public office, and some governments require citizens to identify their religion—for example on state ID cards or passports—but make it illegal, or do not allow, for them to identify as an atheist or as non-religious.”  Especially in Muslim nations, family law often is governed by Shari’a courts implementing Islamic law.

Moreover, “Religious privilege is one of the most common forms of discrimination against atheists.”  Much of this is tangible, especially state funding for religious education and other activities. Rather more controversially the organization includes “religious discrimination, or religious privilege, in this report even when its supporters claim it is merely ceremonial or symbolic.”  The latter is common in the U.S. and, argues IHEU:  “what it symbolizes is the state’s preference for religion and the second class status of the non-religious.”

Not all persecution emanates from government.  As against religious minorities, extra-legal violence is common and governments often do little or nothing in response.  There is little practical difference between state actors doing the killing and failing “to hold violent non-state actors to account,” as detailed in Freedom of Thought 2013.

Some religiously faithful may be inclined to dismiss the freedom not to believe.  However, Matt Cherry, the report’s lead author, emphasizes that “the fight for the rights of the non-religious [are] inextricable from the fight for the rights of the religious.”  All possess a fundamental right of belief and conscience, and an equally fundamental right to act on belief and conscience.

Government practices vary dramatically around the world.  The IHEU uses five categories:  Free and Equal, which means no known cases of discrimination (few nations meet this standard); Mostly Satisfactory, which means some limited, anomalous, or symbolic religious preferences (the U.S. falls into this small group); Systematic Discrimination, which means various restrictions on free expression, some religious privileges, and occasional limits on criticism of religion; Severe Discrimination, which means severe restrictions on expression and activities of non-religious, significant religious privileges, and limits or even prohibitions on criticism of religion; Grave Violations, which means tyrannical control over belief and expression, treating ideology as theology, and turning the state into a de facto arm of religion.

Obviously, one can disagree over details.  For instance, the descriptions offered suggest that some cases of “severe” discrimination are less severe than others.  Sometimes the designation seems exaggerated, even though discrimination/privilege remains real and inappropriate.  For instance, state churches in Europe are obnoxious anachronisms, but appear to have only a limited impact on people’s liberties.

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