[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 12705-12706]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           NICHOLAS KRISTOF ON ``RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN PERIL''

                                  _____
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 22, 2014

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I submit a July 9 column by Nicholas Kristof 
of The New York Times. I have appreciated Mr. Kristof's advocacy on 
human rights issues over the years, particularly regarding the genocide 
in Darfur and ongoing violence in Sudan over the last decade. In this 
recent column, ``Religious Freedom in Peril,'' he cuts through the 
empty gestures that often surround discussions of religious freedom 
abroad, and points out that the Muslim world is tragically 
disproportionate in apostasy and blasphemy laws, limits on religious 
activities and other constraints on religious freedom.
  Of course, religious freedom is at risk throughout the world, and 
Muslims themselves face dire religious persecution from Burma to China 
to India. But recent news, including the advance of Islamic extremists 
in Iraq and the ongoing case of alleged apostate Meriam Ibrahim in 
Sudan, reminds us that citizens of many countries with Muslim 
majorities still deserve far greater justice and equality under the 
law.
  I urge all my colleagues to read Mr. Kristof's column and keep it in 
mind as they consider ongoing events in the world.

                [From The New York Times, July 9, 2014]

                       Religious Freedom in Peril

                         (By Nicholas Kristof)

       A Sudanese court in May sentences a Christian woman married 
     to an American to be hanged, after first being lashed 100 
     times, after she refuses to renounce her Christian faith.
       Muslim extremists in Iraq demand that Christians pay a tax 
     or face crucifixion, according to the Iraqi government.
       In Malaysia, courts ban some non-Muslims from using the 
     word ``Allah.''
       In country after country, Islamic fundamentalists are 
     measuring their own religious devotion by the degree to which 
     they suppress or assault those they see as heretics, creating 
     a human rights catastrophe as people are punished or murdered 
     for their religious beliefs.
       This is a sensitive area I'm wading into here, I realize. 
     Islam-haters in America and the West seize upon incidents 
     like these to denounce Islam as a malignant religion of 
     violence, while politically correct liberals are reluctant to 
     say anything for fear of feeding bigotry. Yet there is a real 
     issue here of religious tolerance, affecting millions of 
     people, and we should be able to discuss it.
       I've been thinking about this partly because of the recent 
     murder of a friend, Rashid Rehman, a courageous human rights 
     lawyer in Multan, Pakistan. Rashid, a Muslim, had agreed to 
     defend a university lecturer who faced the death penalty 
     after being falsely accused of insulting the Prophet 
     Muhammad. This apparently made Rashid a target as well, for 
     two men walked into his office and shot him dead.
       No doubt the killers thought themselves pious Muslims. Yet 
     such extremists do far more damage to the global reputation 
     of Islam than all the world's Islamophobes put together.
       The paradox is that Islam historically was relatively 
     tolerant. In 628, Muhammad issued a document of protection to 
     the monks of St. Catherine's Monastery.
       ``No compulsion is to be on them,'' he wrote. ``If a female 
     Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place 
     without her approval. She is not to be prevented from 
     visiting her church to pray.''
       Anti-Semitism runs deep in some Muslim countries today, 
     but, for most of history, Muslims were more tolerant of Jews 
     than Christians were. As recently as the Dreyfus Affair in 
     France more than a century ago, Muslims defended a Jew from 
     the anti-Semitism of Christians.
       Likewise, the most extreme modern case of religious 
     persecution involved Europeans trying to exterminate Jews in 
     the Holocaust. Since then, one of the worst religious 
     massacres was the killing of Muslims by Christians at 
     Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
       It's also true that some of the bravest champions of 
     religious freedom today are Muslim. Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, an 
     Iranian lawyer, represented a Christian pastor pro bono, 
     successfully defending him from

[[Page 12706]]

     charges of apostasy. But Dadkhah was then arrested himself 
     and is now serving a nine-year prison sentence.
       Saudi Arabia may feud with Iran about almost everything 
     else, but they are twins in religious repression. Saudis ban 
     churches; it insults Islam to suggest it is so frail it 
     cannot withstand an occasional church.
       Particularly insidious in conservative Muslim countries is 
     the idea that anyone born Muslim cannot become a Christian. 
     That's what happened in the case I mentioned in Sudan: The 
     court considered the woman, Meriam Ibrahim, a Muslim even 
     though she had been raised a Christian by her mother. The 
     court sentenced her to die for apostasy; that was overturned, 
     and she is now sheltering with her family in the United 
     States Embassy in Sudan, trying to get permission to leave 
     the country.
       A Pew Research Center study found Muslims victims of 
     religious repression in about as many countries as 
     Christians. But some of the worst abuse actually takes place 
     in Muslim-dominated countries. In Pakistan, for example, a 
     brutal campaign has been underway against the Shiite 
     minority. Likewise, Iran represses the peaceful Bahai, and 
     similarly Pakistan and other countries brutally mistreat the 
     Ahmadis, who see themselves as Muslims but are regarded as 
     apostates. Pakistani Ahmadis can be arrested simply for 
     saying, ``peace be upon you.''
       All this is a sad index of rising intolerance, for 
     Pakistan's first foreign minister was an Ahmadi; now that 
     would be impossible.
       I hesitated to write this column because religious 
     repression is an awkward topic when it thrives in Muslim 
     countries. Muslims from Gaza to Syria, Western Sahara to 
     Myanmar, are already enduring plenty without also being 
     scolded for intolerance. It's also true that we in the West 
     live in glass houses, and I don't want to empower our own 
     chauvinists or fuel Islamophobia.
       Yet religious freedom is one of the most basic of human 
     rights, and one in peril in much of the world. Some heroic 
     Muslims, like my friend Rashid in Pakistan, have sacrificed 
     their lives to protect religious freedom. Let's follow their 
     lead and speak up as well, for silence would be a perversion 
     of politeness.

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