‘Human Rights’ Must Include Tolerance

The State Department recently issued a report on Christian persecution, focusing on China and several Muslim countries. The release of this document has initiated a debate on the issues of religious persecution, human rights and U.S. policy.

As a member of the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, I have evaluated cases of human rights violations, primarily in Muslim countries. One of the most recent examples involved a religious man from a Muslim country. He was visited by security forces at dawn, taken from his place of residence, beaten with cables, hung in contorted positions and stung with electrical prods. During the torture, he was taunted about his religious beliefs. Officers carrying out the torture yelled out, “Where is your God now? If your God was here now, we would torture him as well.” Ultimately, his sister was brought from his home and threatened with rape in front of him.

Now I pose the following question: How would you feel if I informed you that the man was a Christian in a Muslim country? This is bound to induce certain feelings. How do your feelings change when I tell you that, in fact, the victim in this case was a Muslim who was being tortured in a Muslim country? If your feelings have changed, then this points out several challenges in the human rights field.

For example, a part of a church was demolished in Egypt because of unfair regulations, and this is an outrageous occurrence. But how do we consider this outrageousness in light of the fact that a mosque was closed for several years in Egypt because the government was unhappy with the types of teachings promoted in the mosque?

When we discuss religious persecution, we are dealing with a field in which people have particular sensitivities and particular sympathies to their own group or religion. It is a highly politicized field in which emotions run high.

The human rights field is plagued with double standards and political convenience. In terms of religious persecution, particularly in the context of Muslim countries, we must remind ourselves that it takes place in the context of rampant human rights violations. Additionally, religious persecution is socially complex and often masks complex phenomena within society such as communalism, tribalism and economic exploitation. At times, even family feuds express themselves in religious terms. Or a government could be pitting one opposition group against another or trying to divert the attention of its opposition toward religious conflict to distract its opponents.

In the Islamic context, there is a long established history of foreign powers claiming that they are protecting a particular religious minority in perpetuating offensive or aggressive policies against Muslim countries. For example, the invading armies of the Crusades would claim that they were intervening to protect Christians in Muslim countries. The claim of “protecting Christian minorities” also was used to justify colonialism. We must keep in mind that proselytizing Christianity and missionary work went hand in hand with colonialism and its intellectual legacy.

It is indefensible that U.S. policy would respond to discrimination against Christians in particular. Religious discrimination is at the core of human rights, and human rights are indivisible. In promoting human dignity, we must maintain fair-handedness and balance. We cannot argue for one human right by violating or ignoring another. In fact, we cannot emphasize the rights of one group and effectively de-emphasize the rights of others. Playing favorites is a human rights violation in itself.

In addressing the problem of religious persecution from the standpoint of U.S. policy, there must be, first and foremost, impartiality. Second, we must encourage and help independent nongovernmental organizations that promote human rights from within the domestic context. We also must avoid reliance on anecdotal evidence as a basis for policy. Similarly, it is as crucial that we do not rely on the ideological ravings of some writers in influencing policy. Such writers often will use the label “politically Islamic” or “militant Islamic” to justify discriminatory and hostile policies.

There is a statement in the Muslim world, often repeated, that Muslim blood is the cheapest. We have to remember though, that every religious group would probably say that its blood is the cheapest. It is our duty to say that human dignity counts for everyone and all equally.