Starting Points: Freedom of religion

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May 16, 2010

God and democracy - Inside Indonesia

A Christian church is asserting its democratic rights by suing the mayor of Depok

Melissa Crouch

The construction of the church has been on hold

Sukron Hadi

Places of worship are an extremely sensitive subject in contemporary Indonesia. Recent years have seen radical Islamic groups take the law into their own hands as they damage the places of worship of religious minorities, or force others to close by threats of violence. Local government leaders are also becoming more proactive against religious minorities, sometimes cancelling permits for places of worship that have already been granted. One of the first victims was the Christian Batak Protestant Congregation of Cinere, a town in the province of West Java. In May 2009, the mayor of Depok cancelled their permit to build a place of worship, despite the fact that construction of the building had already commenced. In response, the church asserted their democratic rights by filing a legal case in the Administrative Court of Bandung.

This case is significant for two main reasons. First, it is highly symbolic because the church belongs to the largest protestant denomination in Indonesia, with an estimated 3.5 million members across Indonesia. Second, this is one of the first court actions taken by a church against a mayor in relation to a dispute over a permit for a place of worship in Indonesia.

History of the dispute

On 13 June 1998, the mayor of Bogor granted the church a permit to build a place of worship. Four months later, the construction of the church commenced. Throughout 1999, however, large demonstrations by various radical Islamic groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) were held in opposition to the building of the church. In July 2000, the then mayor of Depok, Badrul Kamal, sent a letter to the church recommending that construction cease temporarily until the opposition died down. This effectively caused all construction works to grind to a halt until 2008, when the church decided to recommence building. The church wrote to the mayor of Depok, Nur Mahmudi Ismail, on three separate occasions asking for clarification of the validity of their permit and for protection. They had only completed the foundations and the first level of the building before their plans were again thwarted by demonstrations held in opposition to the church.

Then on 27 March 2009, with no prior warning to the church, the mayor issued a decision which cancelled the church’s original permit. Betty Sitorus, the current deputy chair of the church building committee, suspects that this decision was made to gain support for the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) in the 2010 local elections in the city of Depok. According to her, when the church questioned the mayor about his decision, he emphasised the fact that he made the decision as a Muslim and as a representative (and former chair) of PKS.

Local groups opposed to the building of the church

Sukron Hadi

The mayor’s decision was based on submissions from various government bodies and community groups, such as the Muslim Community Solidarity Forum, an Islamic group that claims to represent the aspirations of local Muslims in Depok. According to the forum head, they demanded that the church permit be revoked because it had acted unfairly by failing to comply with the Joint Regulation of 2006 on Places of Worship, which outlines the process to obtain a permit.

The mayor also relied on letters from the local branch of the Ministry of Religion and from the newly-established Inter-religious Harmony Forum, a body established by the reforms introduced by the 2006 joint regulation at the provincial and city/district level to facilitate the application process for permits for establishing places of worship and to assist in the prevention and resolution of disputes. In fact, the ministry’s brief letter simply recommended that it was the responsibility of the mayor to take action to resolve the conflict. Similarly, the Inter-religious Harmony Forum of Depok in fact did not suggest that the mayor cancel the existing permit, as explained by Dr Lodewijk Gultom, one of the forum’s two Protestant representatives. According to Gultom, the forum has been unable to prevent escalating tensions and, through a misinterpretation of its recommendation, was used by the mayor to legitimise his decision. This eventually led the church to take court action.

Resistance through the courts

The church, represented by its current national leader, Reverend Bonar Napitupulu, and the Cinere church pastor, Reverend Mori Sihombing, filed a lawsuit in the State Administrative Court of Bandung on 6 May 2009 challenging the decision of the mayor to cancel the building permit. Represented by lawyer Junimart, they argued that the church had obtained the permit legally and had fulfilled the conditions of both national and local building laws. They claimed that the mayor had no legal basis on which to cancel their permit, and that his decision was against the right to freedom of religion under Indonesia’s constitution. Junimart pointed out that the church had obtained the signatures of over 100 local residents as evidence of local support for the court – more than is required under Joint Regulation of 2006.

The mayor tells a different story. In responding to the church’s allegations, he referred to the changes that have taken place since decentralisation and the introduction of the joint regulation. He points out that the village of Cinere was only formed in 1999 as part of the process of decentralisation, and that the permit was obtained before this time. This means the head of the village of Cinere never had the opportunity to consider the application. Further, he argues that the original permit could no longer be valid because it was issued under an old regulation concerning places of worship that is no longer in operation.

However, Joint Regulation of 2006 confirms that permits issued prior to 2006 are still valid and legal. According to Fatmawati Djugo, lawyer for the Indonesian Christian Church of Bogor in a similar case in 2008, this provision clarifies that a place of worship which holds a permit under the old system does not need to obtain another permit. In addition, she emphasised that a mayor or district head does not have the power to cancel permits merely because there is opposition from the local community. A clear dispute resolution process is set out under the Joint Regulation. If there is dispute over a proposal for a place of worship, a meeting must first be held by the local community. If that fails to resolve the dispute, consultations are to be arranged with the local division of the Ministry of Religion and the local Inter-religious Harmony Forum. If that is not successful, the case can then be taken to court.

The Cinere case is among the first examples of a church congregation taking its case to court

In the Depok court case, the evidence was inconclusive at best. Both sides produced local Muslim residents as witnesses. Those for the plaintiff testified that they did not have any objections to the construction of the church, while the witnesses for the defence testified to the history of opposition to the church. Large crowds of people turned up in force at the court hearings demanding the closure of the church, many wearing clothes bearing the words ‘Front Pembela Islam’ (Islamic Defenders Front), the name of a radical Islamic group infamous for its use of violence.

After ten years of uncertainty, the court stepped in. On 29 October 2009, the court found that the church had obtained the permit legally under the old regulation and that the building fulfilled the requirements of national and local building laws. The court found that the church was not misusing the permit, which is the only ground on which a mayor could legitimately cancel a permit. On this basis, the court ruled in favour of the church. The mayor has since appealed the decision.

Regulating places of worship

As this incident suggests, local authorities continue to use conflict over places of worship as opportunities for political gain in the highly competitive political atmosphere that has developed since the downfall of Suharto in 1998. The church in Cinere is not the only example. The permit of the Indonesian Christian Church of Bogor was cancelled in 2008, as was the permit of the Santa Maria Catholic church of Purwakarta in October 2009. Both of these incidents occurred in the province of West Java, which has a high rate of church closures by radical Islamic groups. According to the Indonesian Christian Communication Forum, 70 of the 400 churches closed under the New Order (1966-98) occurred in West Java. In 2005 alone, the National Indonesian Communion of Churches recorded that about 50 churches were destroyed or forced to close in the province. Against this background, this case is notable because a religious minority turned to the legal process to assert their newly-found democratic rights. It is even more significant that they won the case.

Regulating the construction of places of worship and containing conflicts arising in the process remains a significant challenge for the national government. As these cases show, the Joint Regulation introduced in 2006 has largely failed to prevent attacks or closures on the places of worship of religious minorities. The outcome of the mayor’s appeal against the church in Cinere is a significant test case in this regard – even if the church is successful, the real issue is whether the court decision will have any effect in practice.

Melissa Crouch (m.crouch@unimelb.edu.au) is writing a PhD at the University of Melbourne’s Law School. She is a research assistant on Professor Tim Lindsey’s Federation Fellowship project, ‘Islam and Modernity’ in the same faculty.

Inside Indonesia 100: Apr-Jun 2010

Jan 14, 2010

Malaysian Catholics' Lawyers Offices Are Ransacked

Image by amos1766 via Flickr

By JAMES HOOKWAY

Intruders ransacked the offices of the legal team that's defending a Malaysian Roman Catholic newspaper's right to use the word Allah in its Malay-language pages, church officials said, marking a fresh escalation of the bitter dispute.

The Rev. Lawrence Andrew, editor of the Catholic Herald, said legal staff found door-locks forced open and papers scattered across the floor when they arrived for work on Thursday morning. Derek Fernandez, the main lawyer acting for the newspaper, said closed circuit television cameras were vandalized to prevent them recording the incident, and that a lap-top computer was missing.

"My first impression is that the break-in is related to the Allah case," Mr. Fernandez said. "It is designed to intimidate us in the case we are handling for the Herald."

The Associated Press quoted Arjunaidi Mohamed, the police chief of the Kuala Lumpur suburb where the break-in occurred, as saying it was too early to link the raid to the recent spate of church attacks.

The ransacking comes amid rising religious tensions in Malaysia after the country's High Court on Dec. 31 ruled that Christians can use the Arabic word Allah in their Malay-language publications. Many Muslims were angered over the ruling, saying the word should be exclusive to Muslims, who could be tricked into following Christianity if non-Muslims are permitted to use the term.

Image by lloydi via Flickr

Since the ruling, which the government is appealing, 10 churches have been attacked in various parts of the country with Molotov cocktails or defaced with paint. Arsonists razed the administrative office of one to the ground. A Sikh temple was also attacked with stones late on Wednesday, possibly because Sikhs also use the term "Allah" in some scriptures.

The Catholic Church, meanwhile, argues that the Arabic word is the only acceptable translation for God in the Malay language, and that Malaysian churches attending to indigenous, Malay-speaking tribes have been using the term for decades.

The dispute presents an awkward problem for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who must call an election by 2013. Political analysts say he needs to retain the support of the country's Muslim majority while winning back votes from the large ethnic-Chinese and Indian minorities, many of whom backed an opposition coalition in the last elections in 2008.

Some economists, meanwhile, worry that Muslim anger over the Dec. 31 court ruling could dissuade Mr. Najib from pushing for further reforms of Malaysia's race-based affirmative action program.

Known as the New Economic Policy, the decades-old initiative was designed to give a boost to the country's Muslim Malay majority and help them catch up economically with their ethnic-Chinese compatriots. Mr. Najib and other government leaders – as well as many business leaders – argue that Malaysia needs to provide a more level playing field to stimulate economic growth, but analysts say carrying out reforms will be politically difficult.

—Celine Fernandez in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this article.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

Dec 26, 2009

Sikh Inmates Caught in Maze of Vague Rules

Editor's Note: Many California state prisons are unaware that they can create regulations to accommodate the religious wishes of their Sikh prisoners, under a 2006 policy created by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

This story was done with a 2009 Irvine Foundation California Politics and Policy Fellowship administered by New America Media. It ran in India-West this week.

Image by roel1943 via Flickr

California state prisons continue to operate under a patchwork mosaic of policy for accommodating Sikh religion-mandated turbans and beards, despite three-year-old regulations specifically crafted to meet the community’s religious requirements.

Many state prison facilities are unaware that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation created regulations in 2006 governing Sikh religious attire, designed to bring the state in line with federal laws.

Officials contacted by India-West at San Quentin State Prison, California State Prison, Solano, and the CDCR itself were unaware of the new policy.

The new regulations are adjustments to California Penal Code Section 3000 regarding grooming in prison, and now permit acceptable “hair holding devices” in state facilities.

An old regulation, stating that hair not exceed three inches, has been struck out, along with regulations applying to beard length.

However, the regulations stipulate that each prison facility must form a religious review committee, which would then determine requests for religious accommodation on a case-by-case basis.

“Prisoners have a right to wear religious garb as their religion allows it,” Michael Risher, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, told India-West. “But quite often, people are told they cannot practice their religion in prison.”

Sikhs are required by their religion to wear five articles of faith, including a turban, also known as a dastaar; a small sword known as a kirpan; unshorn hair, kesh; a wooden comb, kanga; a steel bracelet, kara; and a pair of shorts, known as kaccha.

For orthodox Sikhs, appearing in public without a turban is tantamount to a strip search, Neha Singh, western region director of the Sikh Coalition, told India-West. “It is very humiliating.”

Congress in 2000 enacted the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which prohibits any prison facility receiving federal funding from placing restrictions on prisoners’ rights to practice their religion while incarcerated, in accordance with the provisions of the U.S. constitution’s first amendment. The first amendment prohibits Congress from impeding the free exercise of religion.

All state prisons and many local jails in California receive varying amounts of federal money.
State prisons in New York, Kentucky and Vermont, as well as federal prisons, allow turbans, unshorn hair and beards.

The CDCR began examining its own policies on Sikh religious accommodation in 2005, after Harpal Singh Ahluwalia — incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison for allegedly contracting to kill his wife — and Sikh prisoners at the California State Prison, Solano, began complaining of unfair treatment.

Regulations at the time mandated that prisoners keep their hair no longer than three inches; facial hair and turbans were not permitted. Muslims, however, were allowed to wear kufis, a sort of skull cap, and Jewish prisoners were allowed to wear yarmulkes.

The Sikh Coalition, a national civil rights organization, was contacted by Ahluwalia and others, and began investigating the claims of unfair treatment and the inability to practice the Sikh religion while incarcerated.

Requests for vegetarian meals — many Sikhs eat no meat — also went unheeded at both facilities. In 2004, 72-year-old Khem Singh — a former priest incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison for allegedly molesting a young girl during Sunday prayers — reportedly died of starvation after refusing to eat non-vegetarian meals.

Amardeep Singh, former executive director of the Sikh Coalition, met with officials of the CDCR in December 2005 in a meeting arranged by Rep. Jackie Speier, who was then a state senator, and worked out proposed new regulations that were adopted the following summer, after a public hearing on March 30, 2006.

But the CDCR’s stipulation that each facility decides its own means for accommodating religious requests means “in effect, there’s no policy at all,” Singh, who now serves as the Sikh Coalition’s director of programs and advocacy, told India-West.

Dean Borg, the former chief of adult operations at the CDCR who crafted the new policies, did not return calls for comment.

And the regulations remain largely unknown throughout the state prison system.
A public information officer at California State Prison, Solano, said, “I am not aware of any specifics implemented statewide,” when asked how requests for religious accommodation were adjudicated. A similar response was received from a PIO at San Quentin State Prison.
Terry Thornton, a public information officer with the CDCR, also told India-West she was unaware of statewide regulations regarding religious accommodation.

Thornton asked this publication to supply her with the text of the new policies, and commented after the paper complied with her request.

“The overall standard is that inmates may possess and wear religious items so long as they don't pose an undue security risk,” she said.

“CDCR's property matrix allows inmates to possess religious items in their cells as approved by each religious review committee. This includes yarmulkes, kufi caps and prayer rugs, etc.”

“There is nothing in our regulations or policies that preclude a Sikh inmate from possessing and wearing a turban, but I do not believe there are any prisons that allow inmates to wear a turban either,” said Thornton.

Asked why the CDCR had allowed each state prison facility to determine its own guidelines for religious requests, rather than setting statewide regulations, Thornton said: “It is important to note that every prison in the state is different, houses different kinds of offenders, and has different missions.”

“Each committee needs to have the ability to review requests consistent with each institution's mission, operations, activities, space, custody level and other issues,” she said.

Sikhs have long struggled with the wearing of turbans and kirpans in public places. The Transportation Security Agency only recently amended its rules to allow Sikhs to keep their turbans on during routine airport security checks. Earlier this year, Sikh students were granted permission to wear turbans at MCAT and other professional examinations.

The U.S. Army has just begun accommodating Sikh religious wear on a case-by-case basis, allowing a Sikh doctor and dentist to serve on active duty with a turban and long hair, including a beard. And Sikhs are now allowed to serve as officers with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, while keeping both turbans and beards.

But dastaars and kesh remain out of the landscape of most of the nation’s state prison systems, because of possible safety issues.

Sgt. Michael Jones, of the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department, provided testimony last year in the case of Gurparkash Singh Khalsa, who has been without his turban since he entered San Joaquin County Jail in April 2007.

Khalsa is accused of killing his daughter’s ex-boyfriend Ajmer Hothi, who was 23 at the time of his death.

“It’s a concealment issue,” Jones told India-West. “There are all kinds of things a defendant can pick up and hide in his turban to be used as a weapon later,” he said.

Ballpoint pens can be used for stabbing, as can paper clips, said Jones, pointing out that both can fit very easily into the tightly-wound folds of a turban.

“All kinds of potential dangers are lying about. So we make no exceptions to the rule about headwear for defendants. No one is allowed to wear headwear of any type,” he said.

Singh countered Jones’ statements about concealment.

“Prisoners fit contraband into clothing all the time. Does a turban give more access than regular clothes would?” he queried.

“Even if the answer is yes, this is a question of religious practice. Can the interest of prison safety be met with a quick search?”

“The solution can’t always just be ‘remove the turban.’ This is a core religious requirement,” he said.
Khalsa’s attorney Daniel Horowitz — who filed and lost one of the first cases regarding religious headwear in California state prisons — told India-West: “Religious freedom always gives way to security concerns.” A long-winding piece of cloth could be used in a number of different ways, including committing suicide, he said.

Khalsa has reportedly worked out a compromise with his jailers, said Horowitz, adding that prison guards allow him to use a towel over his head for prayers and public appearances. But such a compromise is not sufficient to accommodate Khalsa’s religious requirements, he said.
Risher of the ACLU said the 2006 amendments to the California penal code were “a step in the right direction.”

“But they are so focused on precise rules that they don’t provide guidance to CDCR staff about how to accommodate prisoners’ religious requirements in general,” Risher said, adding, “As a result, staff may continue to have an inadequate understanding that prisoners have a right to, for example, wear religious headgear, simply because that topic is not specifically covered by the regulation.”

“It might be more useful to ensure that those charged with enforcing the rules are fully informed of the requirements of RLUIPA so that they can follow those requirements as novel situations arise,” he explained.

“Any sort of accommodation to a religious practice is weakest when you’re incarcerated,” Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, told India-West. “During incarceration, all fundamental rights are effectively ceded. By design, rights are curtailed in the extreme,” he said.

The question is whether your right to practice your religion requires the government to accommodate you, added Scheer, explaining that costs, disruption to the environment, and prevailing laws are factors that can be taken into account when states decide how to determine religious requests.

“It’s never been resolved at a sufficiently high level. Cases are not going to federal court, and they’re avoiding publication, so that there is no precedence,” he said.

“People in prison are very vulnerable to retaliation. They tend to think twice about asking for their rights,” asserted Harsimran Kaur, legal director of the Sikh Coalition.

“We need to advocate and protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of our community,” she told India-West, adding, “It’s a difficult issue to get the community to rally around, because there’s a belief that if they’re in prison, they’re guilty, so why should we care?”

California does not capture data on the religious preferences of its prison population, so there are no numbers about how many Sikhs are incarcerated in its prisons. Anecdotally, the Sikh Coalition believes there are fewer than one dozen Sikhs in California state prisons.

Related Articles:

California Sikh Dagger Bill Vetoed by Schwarzenegger

Turbans No Longer Banned at Medical College Exams

Dec 18, 2009

Vietnam: End Attacks on Bat Nha Buddhists

Thich Nhat Hanh via last.fm

EU, Other Donors Should Condemn Officials’ Complicity in Pagoda Siege

December 16, 2009

(New York) - Heavy-handed tactics by Vietnam's central government to disband followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, a prominent Buddhist monk who has called for religious reforms, illustrate Vietnam's ongoing contempt for human rights and religious freedom, Human Rights Watch said today.

For three days, beginning December 9, 2009, orchestrated mobs that included undercover police and local communist party officials terrorized and assaulted several hundred monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue pagoda in central Lam Dong province. Phuoc Hue's abbot has provided sanctuary to the monastics since late September, when police and civilian mobs violently expelled them from their own monastery of Bat Nha, located in the same commune.

During last week's attack, mobs targeted Phuoc Hue's abbot, threatening and haranguing him until they finally forced his consent to a December 31 deadline for the Bat Nha monastics to vacate the pagoda.

Image by nd_architecture_library via Flickr

"Vietnam's international donors should insist that the government halt the attacks on the monks and nuns in Lam Dong, allow them to practice their religion, and prevent any further violent expulsions," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "And they should make clear they will keep close tabs on the situation."

The three-day vigilante assault on Phuoc Hue disrupted a December 9 European Union (EU) fact-finding mission to the pagoda, which was followed by an EU human rights dialogue with Vietnam on December 11. A European Parliament resolution passed in late November called on Vietnam to respect religious freedom and condemned the harassment and persecution of Buddhists in Lam Dong, as well as of followers of other religions and branches of Buddhism.

The EU, one of Vietnam's largest donors, pledged US $1 billion in aid to Vietnam at a donor conference in early December. Sweden - the current EU president - and other donors have pressed Vietnam to lift its restrictions on independent media, religious freedom, and peaceful dissent. A 1995 EU-Vietnam Cooperation Agreement affirms that respect for human rights and democratic principles is the basis for the cooperation.

"The vigilante action to prevent diplomats from meeting with the monks and nuns is a real slap in the face to the EU," Pearson said. "The EU needs to make clear that it has leverage and will use it."

Over the past year, government officials have intensified efforts to disband the community of young monks and nuns that until September was based at a meditation center at Bat Nha monastery established by Thich Nhat Hanh in 2005. Authorities began to take steps to close the center after Thich Nhat Hanh urged the government in 2007 to ease its restrictions on religious freedom.

Thich Nhat Hanh first drew international attention in the 1960s as a leader of South Vietnamese Buddhists opposed to the US war in Vietnam, critical of all sides to the conflict. He continued his anti-war activities from exile in France after he left the country in 1965. The government barred him from returning as he increasingly took on human rights issues, including the plight of the thousands of boat people who fled Vietnam after the communist victory in 1975 and the persecution of Buddhist clergy and patriarchs.

Since the September eviction at Bat Nha, authorities have relentlessly harassed and pressured the Bat Nha Buddhists to vacate Phuoc Hue and other pagodas that took them in, periodically cutting electricity and water and barring local lay people from providing food and supplies. According to government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, in late November local officials were ordered to begin organizing civilians to demonstrate against the monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue, demand the expulsion of the pagoda's abbot, and pressure the monks and nuns to return to their home provinces.

Mob action at Phuoc Hue

On December 9, more than 100 people marched into Phuoc Hue pagoda. Many wore motorcycle helmets, baseball caps, and dust masks - common attire on Vietnam's roadways but not inside Buddhist temples. Coordinated by whistle-blowing leaders, the crowds dragged the abbot out of his room, shouting insults, and demanding that he expel the Bat Nha Buddhists. Video footage captured by some of the monastics show the attackers shoving aside monks and nuns trying to protect the abbot, and assaulting others trying to take photographs.

The crowds, which swelled to 200 people at times over the course of the three days, included people brought in from as far away as Nam Dinh province - 1500 km north of Lam Dong - who told observers they had been mobilized by government officials for three days' work, at 200,000 dong (US $11) a day.

Police cordoned off the streets around the pagoda, with officers posted at the homes of townspeople who had been providing food to the monks and nuns, to prevent them from leaving their homes. The police did nothing to stop the mobs - some armed with hammers and sticks - from attempting to break down the door to the abbot's room, overrunning the pagoda, and terrorizing the monks and nuns. When nuns sat down to pray and chant civilians loomed over them, pulling at their ears and shouting so close to their faces that the nuns had to wipe away the spit.

Leaders of the mob, who included local cadre from party-controlled mass organizations, used megaphones to blast the sounds of police sirens and intensely loud electronic dance music into the pagoda compound. In desperation, the monks began ringing the temple bell constantly to sound an alarm. An ambulance was parked in front of the pagoda.

The provincial head of a special police unit within the Ministry of Public Security called A41 was present during the three days of mob activity. Often called the "religious police," A41 monitors groups the government considers to be religious "extremists" throughout Vietnam.

"What's disturbing about this mob attack is that the Vietnamese government not only failed to protect its own citizens, but that the authorities actively participated in the abuses," said Pearson.

More than half of the Bat Nha monastics remaining at Phuoc Hue are young Vietnamese women recently ordained as nuns. "The nuns don't know where to go - they feel trapped now," one observer told Human Rights Watch. "The whole experience was very traumatic - some were pushed, shoved, spit upon, and even assaulted. Their community has been spiritually killed. They are afraid to be split up and sent back to their home provinces - they want to stay together, in a safe place."

The December 31 eviction deadline for the young monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue coincides with an International Conference on Buddhist women hosted by the Vietnamese government in Ho Chi Minh City. "It's ironic that as young nuns and monks face the possibility of another violent eviction on December 31, participants at a government-hosted international Buddhist conference in Vietnam will be discussing the role of female Buddhists in preventing conflicts and violence," said Pearson.

Orchestrated mob action is not a new phenomenon in Vietnam, particularly in remote "hot spots," where authorities want to prevent any interaction between local communities and international visitors such as diplomats and journalists.

"What was different in Lam Dong is that diplomats saw with their own eyes government-orchestrated suppression of religious freedom and basic rights," Pearson said. "As such, the EU is uniquely placed to convey its strong concerns to the Vietnamese government about what happened."

Human Rights Watch has obtained copies of a series of directives from the government, ruling Communist Party, and government-appointed Buddhist officials that appear to order the assault on the pagoda.

A November 26 directive from the government's Religious Affairs Committee instructed local Buddhist officials and the Communist People's Committee to "mobilize" the Bat Nha Buddhists to return to their "proper residences" in their home provinces. Similar directives were issued by the official Vietnam Buddhist Church - a government-appointed body - on November 30, and by the local People's Committee on December 7.

"The EU and other donors should make it clear that they hold the Vietnamese government responsible for last week's events in Lam Dong," Pearson said. "Vietnam's donors need to voice their strong concerns, monitor the situation very closely, and do their best to be physically present at Phuoc Hue pagoda on the December 31 eviction deadline."

Dec 17, 2009

Global Restructions on Religion

Image via Wikipedia

Executive Summary

For more than half a century, the United Nations and numerous international organizations have affirmed the principle of religious freedom.¹ For just as many decades, journalists and human rights groups have reported on persecution of minority faiths, outbreaks of sectarian violence and other pressures on religious individuals and communities in many countries. But until now, there has been no quantitative study that reviews an extensive number of sources to measure how governments and private actors infringe on religious beliefs and practices around the world.

"Global Restrictions on Religion," a new study by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that 64 nations -- about one-third of the countries in the world -- have high or very high restrictions on religion. But because some of the most restrictive countries are very populous, nearly 70% of the world's 6.8 billion people live in countries with heavy restrictions on religion, the brunt of which often falls on religious minorities.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Some restrictions result from government actions, policies and laws. Others result from hostile acts by private individuals, organizations and social groups. The highest overall levels of restrictions are found in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, where both the government and society at large impose numerous limits on religious beliefs and practices. But government policies and social hostilities do not always move in tandem. Vietnam and China, for instance, have high government restrictions on religion but are in the moderate or low range when it comes to social hostilities. Nigeria and Bangladesh follow the opposite pattern: high in social hostilities but moderate in terms of government actions.

Among all regions, the Middle East-North Africa region has the most government and social restrictions on religion, while the Americas are the least-restrictive region on both measures. Among the world's 25 most populous countries, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and India stand out as having the most restrictions when both measures are taken into account, while Brazil, Japan, the United States, Italy, South Africa and the United Kingdom have the least.

Image by wallyg via Flickr

This study examines the incidence of many specific types of government and social restrictions on religion around the world. In 75 countries (38%), for example, national or local governments limit efforts by religious groups or individuals to persuade others to join their faith. In 178 countries (90%), religious groups must register with the government for various purposes, and in 117 (59%) the registration requirements resulted in major problems for, or outright discrimination against, certain faiths.

Public tensions between religious groups were reported in the vast majority (87%) of countries in the period studied (mid-2006 through mid-2008). In 126 countries (64%), these hostilities involved physical violence. In 49 countries (25%), private individuals or groups used force or the threat of force to compel adherence to religious norms. Religion-related terrorism caused casualties in 17 countries, nearly one-in-ten (9%) worldwide.

Image via Wikipedia

These are some of the key findings of "Global Restrictions on Religion." The study covers 198 countries and self-administering territories, representing more than 99.5% of the world's population. In preparing this study, the Pew Forum devised a battery of measures, phrased as questions, to gauge the levels of government and social restrictions on religion in each country. To answer these questions, Pew Forum researchers combed through 16 widely cited, publicly available sources of information, including reports by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Council of the European Union, the United Kingdom's Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, the Hudson Institute and Amnesty International. (The complete list of sources is available in the Methodology.)

The researchers involved in this process recorded only factual reports about government actions, policies and laws, as well as specific incidents of religious violence or intolerance over the main two-year period covered by this study, from mid-2006 to mid-2008; they did not rely on the commentaries or opinions of the sources. (For a more detailed explanation of the coding and data verification procedures, see the Methodology. For the wording of the questions, see the Summary of Results.) The goal was to devise quantifiable, objective measures that could be combined into two comprehensive indexes, the Government Restrictions Index and the Social Hostilities Index. Using the current, two-year average as a baseline, future editions of the indexes will be able to chart changes and trends over time.

Read the full report at pewforum.org

"Global Restrictions on Religion" is part of a larger effort -- the Global Religious Futures Project, jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation -- that aims to increase knowledge and understanding of religion around the world.

_{1. According to Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the foundational documents of the U.N., "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."}

Nov 18, 2009

The Associated Press - Malaysia Muslim preacher charged in factional feud

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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Islamic authorities in Malaysia charged a popular Muslim scholar Wednesday with delivering an illegal lecture in what critics considered an attempt by conservative clerics to silence a leading moderate preacher.

Asri Zainul Abidin has cultivated strong support among young people in the Muslim-majority country for criticizing what he called overzealous efforts by Islamic officials to clamp down on immoral behavior.

The case against Asri indicates conservative Islamists are worried about threats to their influence from a younger generation of moderate clerics in Malaysia.

In recent years, clerics have faced criticism for issuing edicts that barred girls from behaving like tomboys and banned Muslims from participating in yoga, although neither was enforced. Earlier this year, an Islamic judge ordered a Muslim woman caned for drinking alcohol. The sentence is yet to be carried out.

Clerics say such practices violated Islam, but the hard-line edicts have hurt Malaysia's reputation as a modern and moderate Muslim-majority country.

Asri, 38, pleaded innocent in an Islamic Shariah court to the charge of conducting a religious lecture in central Selangor state Nov. 1 without authorization from the state's Islamic department. Asri, who remains free on bail ahead of a hearing scheduled for Jan. 5, faces a maximum prison sentence of two years or a fine if convicted.

The Islamic state agency defended its move after detaining Asri earlier this month, saying he had broken the law by not securing official permission to conduct religious talks.

However, Asri said he was a victim of "selective prosecution" because he has repeatedly said that Malaysia's senior clerics should not be obeyed blindly — despite their tremendous clout in dictating how Muslims should live.

Asri has triggered controversy by slamming Islamic authorities who conduct raids on hotel rooms to look for unmarried Muslim couples having sex. He has also defended the right of non-Muslims to use "Allah" as a translation for "God" in Bibles and other non-Muslim texts. Other Islamic officials have insisted the word "Allah" is exclusive to Islam.

The Malaysian Muslim Professionals' Forum criticized the prosecution of Asri and urged Islamic authorities to "respect the right to dissent and to uphold freedom of expression, and to argue based on wisdom and not on hearsay or personal attacks."

Oct 27, 2009

Clinton discourages anti-defamation laws to protect religion - washingtonpost.com

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Islamic countries seek to restrict freedom to criticize religions

By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized on Monday an attempt by Islamic countries to prohibit defamation of religions, saying such policies would restrict free speech.

"Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies. . . . I strongly disagree," Clinton said. "The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faiths will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions."

While unnamed in Clinton's speech, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of 56 Islamic nations, has been pushing hard for the U.N. Human Rights Council to adopt resolutions that broadly bar the defamation of religion. The effort has raised concerns that such resolutions could be used to justify crackdowns on free speech in Muslim countries.

Clinton made her comments while unveiling the State Department's annual report on international religious freedom.

Many advocates of religious freedom applauded Clinton's remarks on blasphemy laws, but some said the report did not go far enough in censuring or proposing action against countries with a track record of abuses or persecution on religious grounds.

"To date, President Obama has raised religious freedom in his speeches abroad without those sentiments being translated into concrete policy actions, and our hope is that this report will be the administration's call to action," said Leonard Leo, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent federal agency.

The 1998 legislation that established the annual report on religious freedom created Leo's group -- a permanent, nine-member commission to advise the president and government -- as well as an ambassador at large for international religious freedom.

Knox Thames, acting executive director of the group, singled out the report's description of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Vietnam. "I think it could be stronger. In their Vietnam chapter, for instance, it completely ignores the issue of prisoners. It's believed several individuals are in jail because of their religiously motivated politics," he said. "We just think that's a mistake."

Tom Farr, who was the first director of the State Department's office of international religious freedom and now teaches at Georgetown University, called the report imbalanced. "It spends too much time identifying the problem and not enough on what the U.S. is doing and should be doing to address the problem," he said.

Farr also noted that the report was presented without an ambassador at large in charge of international religious freedom, because Obama has not nominated a candidate.

"I think it's a bad sign," he said. "There's no excuse for not having anyone in that spot by now."

Monday's report also was notable for highlighting interfaith efforts, something Obama has pushed in his international speeches. Clinton, in her remarks, made deliberate mention of two such efforts, including contributions by Jordan to an interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

Staff writer Mary Beth Sheridan contributed to this report.

Sep 1, 2009

French Parliament to Investigate a Possible Ban on the Burqa and Niqab - NYTimes.com

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By STEVEN ERLANGER

PARIS — It is a measure of France’s confusion about Islam and its own Muslim citizens that in the political furor here over “banning the burqa,” as the argument goes, the garment at issue is not really the burqa at all, but the niqab.

A burqa is the all-enveloping cloak, often blue, with a woven grill over the eyes, that many Afghan women wear, and it is almost never seen in France. The niqab, often black, leaves the eyes uncovered.

Still, a movement against it that started with a Communist mayor near Lyon has gotten traction within France’s ruling center-right party, which claims to be defending French values, and among many on the left, who say they are defending women’s rights. A parliamentary commission will soon meet to investigate whether to ban the burqa — in other words, any cloak that covers most of the face.

The debate is indicative of the deep ambivalence about social customs among even a small minority of France’s Muslim citizens, and of the signal fear that France’s principles of citizens’ rights, equality and secularism are being undermined.

French discomfort with organized religion, dating from the 1789 revolution and the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church, is aggravated by these foreign customs, which are associated in the Western mind with repression of women.

André Gerin, a Communist Party legislator and mayor of Vénissieux, a Lyon suburb with many Muslims from North Africa, began the affair in late June by initiating a motion, signed by 57 other legislators, calling for the parliamentary commission.

“The burqa is the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Gerin said. “Islamism really threatens us.” In a letter to the government, he wrote: “It is time to take a stand on this issue that concerns thousands of citizens who are worried to see imprisoned, totally veiled women.”

A few days later, President Nicolas Sarkozy said that “the burqa is not welcome on the territory of the French Republic.” He did not say how it would be made unwelcome, however, or whether he intended to extend existing laws that already ban head scarves or any other religious symbol from public schools.

For Mr. Sarkozy, who defends participation in the Afghan war as a matter of women’s rights, “the problem of the burqa is not a religious problem,” he said. “It is a problem of liberty and the dignity of women. It is a sign of servitude and degradation.”

There is a strong suspicion that Mr. Sarkozy, who has supported religious freedom, is playing politics in a time of economic unhappiness and social anxiety. But he also seems to want to restrict more radical and puritanical forms of Islam from gaining further hold here.

The French press has been full of heated opinion pieces, charts about different Islamic veils, stories about public swimming pools and the burqini, an Islamic swimsuit that covers the body and the hair (but not the face). Women wearing the niqab, many of them French converts to Islam, have said that they have freely chosen to cover themselves after marriage. Others say solemnly that to stigmatize or ban the veil would only cause more women to wear it, out of protest.

Last year, Faiza Silmi, now 33, was denied French citizenship in part for wearing the niqab, bringing a legal judgment about personal dress into the home. In an interview with Le Monde, Ms. Silmi said that she chose to wear the niqab after her marriage, even if her own mother thought it was “a little too much.”

“Don’t believe for a moment that I am submissive to my husband!” she said. “I’m the one who takes care of the documents and the money.”

Passions have been so high that when domestic intelligence issued a report saying that only 367 women in France wore a full veil, it seemed to make no difference.

For many French Muslims, the entire discussion is an embarrassment and an incitement to racial and religious hatred.

M’hammed Henniche is the secretary for the private Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis. He is French first of all, he said, and he is appalled.

“There’s nothing but confusion,” he said. “What they’re talking about is the niqab, but I think choosing to use burqa instead is not an accident. They chose a word that is associated with Afghanistan, and that spreads a negative, scary image.

“There are laws in France that force women to show their face, in certain situations, at the town hall, at the bank,” Mr. Henniche added. “Women who wear niqab take it off when they must. But in the streets, everyone is free. They’re spinning this story in order to stigmatize a community.”

Even existing laws are misunderstood, he said, with a woman refused entry to a bank because employees thought a head scarf was illegal. “It’s a dangerous slip, going from a ban in school to a ban in the streets,” he said.

John R. Bowen, who wrote “Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State and Public Space,” has been asked to testify by the parliamentary commission.

“French political discourse is internally conflicted,” said Mr. Bowen, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. There is confusion about different kinds of public space, he said — the street, and places that belong to the state but are not freely open to the public, like schools.

France took from Rousseau the principle that no intermediate group or affiliation should stand between the citizen and the state, which represents the general interest, Mr. Bowen said. But Rousseau also championed the right to form private associations, or clubs. It was not until 1901, however, that the state allowed some unions or associations, Mr. Bowen said, and not until 1981 that foreigners could form them.

Muslim groups then started religious tutoring, seen as promoting Islam, and clubs based on ethnicity or religion are viewed with great suspicion, Mr. Bowen said. “There is a sense that people who are publicly displaying their religious or ethnic characteristics are a slap in the face of French applied political theory.”

Mr. Bowen does not think there will be a law banning the niqab. Nor does Yazid Sabeg, Mr. Sarkozy’s commissioner for diversity and equal opportunity, who said it would be unenforceable.

“Even if they ban the burqa, it will not stop there,” Mr. Henniche, of the Muslim group, said. “There is a permanent demand for legislating against Muslims. This could go really bad, and I’m scared of it. I feel like they’re turning the screws on us.”

Nadim Audi contributed reporting from Paris.