Recent Commentaries:

18 May 2005
COMMENTARY: National security suffers if religious freedom attacked

By Aleksandr Klyushev, Association of Religious Organisations of Kazakhstan

Wide-ranging national security amendments now in parliament will negatively affect many groups – including the media, NGOs, business people and religious communities – but religious believers will suffer the most, argues Aleksandr Klyushev, chairman of the Association of Religious Organisations of Kazakhstan (AROK), in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. If adopted, these amendments will cause unjustified suffering to law-abiding believers, who could be punished for peacefully practising their faith. He believes that this will cause national security to suffer, both by alienating citizens from the state and also by enabling incompetent law-enforcement personnel to claim successes in combating illegal but harmless religious organisations, instead of effectively policing real criminal and terrorist threats to Kazakh society. He calls on the international community to influence the Kazakh government not to adopt the amendments.

16 March 2005
COMMENTARY: No religious freedom without democracy: a lesson from "Orange Ukraine"

By Myroslav Marynovych, Ukrainian Catholic University http://www.ucu.edu.ua

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's surprise announcement last month of the abolition of the State Committee for Religious Affairs is a powerful signal to the rest of the region that governments should end their meddling in religious life, argues former Soviet political prisoner Professor Myroslav Marynovych, who is now vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University http://www.ucu.edu.ua in Lviv, in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. He regards the feeling in Ukraine that the communist model of controlling religion is now dead as the greatest gain of the "Orange Revolution" in the sphere of religion. Yet Professor Marynovych warns that other countries will find it hard to learn from the proclaimed end of Ukrainian government interference in religious matters without wider respect for human rights and accountable government. Without democratic change – which should bring in its wake greater freedom for religious communities from state control and meddling - it is unlikely that religious communities will escape from government efforts to control them.

5 January 2005
COMMENTARY: Azerbaijan's democracy "is being sold for oil"

By an Azerbaijani Protestant

In this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org , an Azerbaijani Protestant, anonymous to avoid state persecution, pleads for the international community to promote religious freedom for all, as "it seems to us that our democracy is being sold for oil. Foreigners are afraid to call things by their real name. They are afraid to tell our government bluntly that human rights violations must end." He argues that "religious freedom cannot exist without other freedoms, such as freedom of expression and association, as well as press and literature freedom. Because of this, religious freedom is a litmus test for freedom and democracy in any society, including Azerbaijan." He concludes by proposing practical steps for effective dialogue with Azerbaijan's leaders, leading to real religious freedom, and how religious minorities can be involved in this process.

7 December 2004
COMMENTARY: Assessing Europe's 'headscarf law' debates

By Julia Doxat-Purser, Religious Liberty Coordinator, European Evangelical Alliance <http://www.europeanea.org>

French politicians are wrong to believe that the acquiescence shown by most schoolchildren to the law banning the wearing of prominent religious symbols signals their acceptance of the law, argues Julia Doxat-Purser, Religious Liberty Coordinator of the European Evangelical Alliance http://www.europeanea.org, in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. Many fear that limiting people's ability to express their religious faith and cultural identity is going to push some towards extremism. French religious communities have pointed out that France, the supposed home of human rights, now infringes people's free religious practice. In Germany too, the decision of some Federal States to pass "headscarf laws" is controversial, former Federal President Johannes Rau condemning these moves as "the first step toward the creation of a secular state that bans religious signs and symbols from public life." One factor in debates about religious belief in society is that some politicians mistakenly assume that religious belief involves the imposition of views on others – an assumption that many religious believers would strongly dispute.

10 November 2004
COMMENTARY: Kosovo - What now?

By a KFOR military chaplain

The KFOR peace-keeping force needs to defend the Serbian population and its Orthodox churches more effectively, a military chaplain, who prefers not to be identified, argues from personal experience of the violence in Kosovo in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. The chaplain believes that international organisations naively did not understand the minds of the people of the region – and so did not understand what was necessary to provide religious freedom. The international community needs to state clearly that independence will not be granted until minorities have full rights and security. The big challenge is changing people's mentality before independence can be considered – and this requires a long-term commitment to genuine peace and genuine justice from both Albanian politicians and the international community.

2 September 2004
COMMENTARY: Away with legal discrimination - Serbia shouldn't follow Austria

By Dr. Reinhard Kohlhofer, Rechtsanwalt, Vienna-based Austrian lawyer http://www.kohlhofer.at

The Serbian draft law on religion follows Austria's hastily passed 1998 law in dividing religious communities into different categories with differing legal rights, thus institutionalising religious discrimination, comments Dr. Reinhard Kohlhofer, an Austrian lawyer specialising in religious freedom, in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. The Austrian law is a bad example for Serbia to follow, Dr. Kohlhofer argues, having been severely criticised by international lawyers, and also being the subject of a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) case, with a decision expected in the next few months. In a 1993 case involving Greece, the ECHR ruled that "freedom of thought, conscience and religion is one of the foundations of a democratic society" and that "the pluralism indissociable from a democratic society .. depends on it." Dr. Kohlhofer goes on to state that there is no justification for states to legally discriminate between or against religious communities, and that democracy demands nothing less than the elimination of all forms of legal discrimination.

10 June 2004
COMMENTARY: Religious freedom, the best counter to religious extremism

By Nariman Gasimoglu, head of Religion & Democracy <http://addm.az.iatp.net/ana.html>

Islamic religious extremism in Uzbekistan – which threatens to spread in Central Asia and elsewhere - is largely the result of government repression and lack of democracy, Azerbaijani scholar and translator of the Koran Nariman Gasimoglu, head of the Center for Religion and Democracy http://addm.az.iatp.net/ana.html in Baku and a former Georgetown University (USA) visiting scholar, argues in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. Extremist Islamist groups, like the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir party, which do not yet enjoy widespread support, have been strengthened by repression while moderate Muslims, Protestants and Jehovah's Witnesses have suffered. The best, if not the only way to counter religious extremism, Gasimoglu maintains, is to open up society to religious freedom for all, democracy, and free discussion – even including Islamist groups. This is the only way, he argues, of depriving Islamic extremism of support by revealing the reality of what extremism in power would mean.

13 January 2004
COMMENTARY: Religious freedom under Islam

By Henrik Ertner Rasmussen, General Secretary, Danish European Mission <http://www.daneu.dk>

In this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org, Henrik Ertner Rasmussen, General Secretary of the Danish European Mission http://www.daneu.dk, draws on his experience of living and studying in the Muslim world to examine how Islam understands religious freedom. He believes Muslims' attitudes to religious freedom have been shaped by the concept of Dhimmitude, under which proselytism by non-Muslims was banned, and Jews and Christians have become second-class citizens with only limited rights. He notes that a "religious supermarket" with a free choice of different products and brands has not been introduced in the Muslim world, but sees signs of hope that intellectuals and religious officials in the Muslim world are discussing new ideas openly and are suggesting reforms which could lead to greater religious liberty.