Religious Persecution Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Religious persecution can be broadly defined as an action that either obstructs or inhibits religious practice or that seeks to impose particular religious or antireligious norms. Students of religious persecution disagree about what constitutes persecution; some scholars consider any adversity caused due to religious belief to be persecution, while others have suggested more stringent criteria of bodily harm, displacement, or death. Either the state or a particular religious or social community may serve as the primary agent of persecution. In cases where subnational groups engage in persecution, the national government may either be complicit in the activity or unable to stop it.

The most extreme form of persecution consists of a direct campaign against either a particular religious group or against all persons who do not belong to a dominate faith position in a territorial area. Either through genocide, forced migration, or forced conversion, such campaigns attempt to eliminate the targeted religion(s) from a particular area. The Spanish Inquisition by Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, against Muslims, Jews, and nonconformists, is one of history’s best known examples.

More commonly, persecution undermines religious freedom rather than directly assaulting it. In many cases the state’s regulatory power imposes burdensome restrictions that inhibit the ability of adherents to practice their religion; for example, by consistently refusing to allow the construction of places of worship. In other instances, the state may deny benefits, services or opportunities to the targeted group. The state also may restrict freedom by compelling its citizens to follow a specific set of norms, such as the explicit prohibition of the religious attire of a part of the population or the requirement that all residents of a state conform to religious standards of the majority.

Powerful sub state actors also engage in religious persecution. In some cases, the state tacitly allows or encourages social or religious communities to carry out persecution. A state might formally provide for religious freedom, but allow a dominant social community to informally exclude other religious communities from opportunities such as employment, or allow a campaign of intimidation by failing to sanction acts such as the destruction of places of worship. Substate persecution is also a common feature in weak or failing states. In these instances, persecution frequently takes on a violent character and often is linked with ethnic or regional conflict. One example is Lashkar Jihad’s assault on Christians in Indonesia’s Maluku Islands.

The principle of religious freedom as a human right is enshrined in Article 18 of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and again in the binding International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified in 1977. These conventions guarantee all persons equality of treatment regardless of religious beliefs or the lack of such beliefs, and freedom of exercise in matters of conscience except when this causes a specific conflict with social order. A variety of theories have been advanced to account for the development of the acknowledged right to religious freedom, and the classification of denial of such rights as persecution. One widely held theory credits a rise of Enlightenment liberalism and mass identification with a national state, along with a corresponding decrease of the importance of religion to identity. Other scholars have challenged this explanation, contending that a form of rational-choice theory in which individual states allow religious freedom when the benefit to the state outweighs the cost provides a better explanation.

Despite the assertion of freedom of religion as a human right, governments still claim to legitimately enforce laws that restrict some aspects of religious practice. The most common justification comes from balancing a right to religious freedom against other functions of the state. In such instances the state contends that some other fundamental interest of the state trumps its population’s right to religious freedom. Controversy persists regarding which restrictions are legitimate exercises of state authority, particularly when a state possesses an explicitly secular or religious identity.

Much attention has been focused on religious persecution in countries that incorporate sharia law into their legal systems. Enforcement of provisions prohibiting Muslims from leaving Islam has been particularly scrutinized. Consistent with an understanding that allows fundamental state interests preference over religious liberty, many states in the Islamic world made reservations to Article 18 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, agreeing to follow the article only insomuch as it is consistent with their interpretation of sharia. Religious constituencies in the United States have called for these restrictions on religious freedom to be officially opposed as religious persecution in U.S. foreign policy.

Religious persecution is officially condemned both by the United Nations and by many of the world’s most influential nations. However, despite the fact that religious persecution is criticized as a violation of fundamental human rights, active opposition to persecution is routinely evaluated against both other foreign policy goals and against what can be realistically achieved by such opposition. Citizens of strong states who experience religious persecution frequently have little remedy in practice.

Bibliography:

Abrams, Elliott, ed. The Influence of Faith: Religious Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
Gill, Anthony. “The Political Origins of Religious Liberty: A Theoretical Outline.” Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 1 (2005): 1–35.
The Political Origins of Religious Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Grim, Brian J., and Roger Finke. “Religious Persecution in Cross-national Context: Clashing Civilizations or Regulated Religious Economies?” American Sociological Review 72 (August 2007): 633–658.
Gunn,T. Jeremy. “The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of ‘Religion’ in International Law.” Harvard Human Rights Journal 16 (2003): 189–215.
Hertzke, Allen. Freeing God’s Children:The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.
Marshall, Paul, ed. Religious Freedom in the World. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.

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