2004 World Religious Freedom Report Card Out

The U.S. Commission on International religious Freedom has issued its annual report on the state of religion in the world.

This year’s report focuses paritcularly on ensuring religious freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan, and notes that there has been more success in promoting it in the former than in the latter (which is not surprising since Iraq has been home to substantial Christian and Jewish minorities for centuries, whereas Afghanistan was the recent home of the Taliban).

The problem areas of the world continue to be–as one would expect–the Muslim and Atheist (i.e., Communistic) regions. In regard to the former, the report notes:

Freedom of religion or belief as an individual, as opposed to a group, right is not well protected in the Middle East or among countries where Islam is the religion of the state. Many constitutions of these states protect religious belief only, rather than both belief and practice, as required by international norms. Moreover, rights are usually expressed in general terms rather than in the form of explicit guarantees of rights for each person. Nevertheless, there are exceptions: Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Malaysia—states where Islam is the state religion—have constitutional guarantees that compare favorably with international standards, as do several other predominately Muslim countries such as Albania, Azerbaijan, Mali, and Senegal.

I’m not sure by what criteria some of these statements are judged. I happen to know that in Malaysia, for example, though you can’t be executed for converting to Christianity from Islam, you can be imprisoned. I wouldn’t call that “compar[ing] favorably with international standards.”

There’s still a lot of work that need to be done to allow the gospel to spread freely in these lands.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin