-State Department: Report on Religious Freedom
by Dr. D ~ July 31st, 2012
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The US State department just released their “International Religious Freedom Report for 2011.”
The funding for the committee that does the on-going research for this report was nearly eliminated by the Obama administration and their supporters in Congress. However, the outcry from religious leaders across the USA made it a political football that could not be ignored and discontinued. So here we have the latest report on religious freedom all around the world.
Note that Muslim countries are among the greatest deniers of religious liberty along with Communist countries like North Korea, Cuba, and China which always seem to make the list with the greatest problems.
The report starts out with this statement:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
At the very beginning of the report is a self-serving political statement (probably intended for the media) that seems to have been dropped into the report to support what President Obama has been saying lately about how the ‘Arab Spring’ has brought forth greater liberty to the religious minorities in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. However all of my sources in Christian missions and Christian persecution watchdogs say just the opposite. The area is now trending toward radical Islamism and greater implementation of sharia law and Christians in those countries are now experiencing greater persecution then before.
The rest of the report seems to give the usual insights into countries all around the world with a look towards the greatest offenders of religious freedom. Chief among those offenders are Afghanistan and Pakistan. The report is quite accurate here with the least amount of political tampering by the political wing of the Obama administration. *Top
August 1st, 2012 at 12:08 pm
[…] -State Department: Report on Religious Freedom (answersforthefaith.com) […]