Security And Religious Freedom
Robert A. Seiple January/February 2003The linkage of security and religious freedom is really not that new. In the United States the connection was first made in the 1663 Rhode Island Colonial Charter from England. "They have ffreely declared, that it is much on their hearts . . . to hold forth a livlie experiment, that a most flourishing civill state may stand and best bee maintained . . . with a full libertie in religious concernements; and that true pietye rightly grounded upon gospell principles, will give the best and greatest security to sovereignetye, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to true loyaltye." v It is obvious, in the words of the American forebears that "true pietye rightly grounded" and "greatest security" were absolutely critical to a "flourishing civill state." Religious freedom became the cornerstone of a civil society. That awareness is coming back to us today. Note the words of the International Crisis Group in their March 2001 report on Central Asia: "Treat religious freedom as a security issue, not just a human rights issue, and advocate unequivocally that regional security can only be assured if religious freedom is guaranteed and the legitimate activities of groups and individuals are not suppressed." But then came the events of September 11, 2001, a new historical reality that immediately produced the clich̩ "and the world would never be the same again" (certainly not the American understanding of that world!). At the very least it was time to look at the issue of religious freedom again, albeit in a much more complicated context. What is the status of this issue in the world today? What is its relevance? What will happen to all those single-issue advocates who, in times past, were able to mouth lofty principles without ever considering the realistic process of implementation? Will those of us who tend to view life through the lens of the moral imperative be able to relate to the hard-line, security-conscious realists?
Security has jumped to the top of America's, and I dare say the world's, hierarchy of values. Any organization that seeks to be relevant, to have a seat at the table—public or private—needs to be conversant in national and global security. For the foreseeable future everything else will pale in comparison.
Unfortunately, for most of the human rights community, that nexus point between religious freedom and security has yet to be made. The most troubling and the most legitimate human rights concern is: Will the need for security provide authoritarian leaders the rationale desired for an additional crackdown on the opposition in their country?
Many countries in the world today have legitimate security concerns. Russia is fighting a war in Chechnya. Uzbekistan has seen its own governmental buildings blown up by terrorists. The Chinese are always concerned about security issues on their borders, from Tibet to the northwest Autonomous Region. But now the world is being framed in large categories: "good and evil," "us and them," "those who are for us and those who are against." The world is at war with terrorists and terrorism, and nuance is the first casualty of war!
Would anyone care about Chechnya? Would the world take notice of the numbers of moderate Muslims who are being radicalized by the harsh overreach of Karimov? And the Muslim Uighurs and Tibetan Buddhists, would they be relegated in our collective consciousness to a form of benign neglect? Let's be honest, without the events of September 11 would we ever have experienced the blunt-edged boldness of the Israeli military, as a conflict is allowed to escalate out of control and rational thought?
This is an issue of grave concern. Especially so, if the addressing of this issue from only one side, religious freedom, without any understanding of the legitimate concerns for national security, leaves the human rights activist without an audience.
The second issue that produced an outcry from the human rights establishment was the treatment of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guant