The news story that voters, by a bare majority, have banned construction of new minarets in Switzerland seems to have very strong legs. Western liberals are appalled at the bigotry. Muslims generally are taking offense. My first impulse, as one of those liberals, was to produce a satire, which I’ll stand by, but I’d like to pursue the matter more directly here.
Heated Rhetoric
Most Muslim countries are not nearly so restrictive as Saudi Arabia which forbids the importation of a single Bible for personal use. But, in or out of the Muslim world, attitudes toward minorities’ religious rights vary so enormously, information touching on tolerance and intolerance is so anecdotal, practice so often departs from noble constitutional language and rhetoric serves mainly to lob verbal missiles across walls of willful misunderstanding and naked impermeable hostility.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Sorting out this mishmash is well nigh impossible, so let’s start from scratch, again. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which came into effect on December 10, 1948, contains the following language: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.
In many places today, constitutions written in consonance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights notwithstanding, there is in fact no freedom of religion or conscience. In other places, law and practice hew fairly close to Article 18. However, even in these very happy countries (from a liberal’s point of view), disputes arise over claims of unequal treatment. Given the degree to which diverse people migrate from country to country and belief communities hive off into new neighborhoods, it might be wise to call an interfaith, interdenominational conference to define more specifically what those universal rights entail, not only on paper, but in practice. As we all know, various sorts of red tape can and do frustrate many beautifully written, well meant laws.
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