The GOP’s appointment of prominent purveyors of anti-Muslim hatred to positions on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is both disturbing and instructive. It exposes the cynical and misguided approach Republicans have taken to the entire enterprise of promoting religious freedom.
Twenty years ago, pushed by right-wing religious fundamentalists in the Republican Party, Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). It was described as an effort to establish “a multifaceted programme for ensuring that religious freedom has a permanent place in the formulation of US foreign policy.”
To fulfil this mandate, the IRFA created the office of International Religious Freedom at the State Department headed by an Ambassador-at-large. This office was charged with monitoring the state of religious freedom around the world, identifying countries where serious violations occurred, and then recommending steps that the US government should take to press countries into compliance.
USCIRF was charged by the IRFA with reviewing the State Department’s annual religious freedom report and then commenting on its findings, making its independent recommendations and observations to Congress and the Administration. When the legislation was being debated, it was vigorously opposed by a number of groups, including the major US Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church, Arab American and American Muslim groups, and career diplomats at the Department of State.
There were early warnings that the IRFA would be used by right-wing ideologues to push their agenda on other countries without understanding that they might do more harm than good to victims of religious persecution.
Twenty years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, the state of religious freedom is arguably worse than it was when the IRFA was passed and the proponents of the legislation cannot point to positive changes that have been the result of their efforts.
Especially problematic has been the ill-conceived role played by USCIRF. Over a period of time, it began to develop an agenda of its own, writing its own report and issuing open letters or Press releases chiding the government for failing to act on USCIRF’s concerns.
I was twice appointed by President Obama to serve on the commission and twice elected as its vice-chair. What I found in my four years was a deeply flawed body that was incapable of making a meaningful contribution to protecting religious freedom around the world. What was most disturbing was the extent to which USCIRF had come to be dominated by an element of hardliners who saw themselves playing an adversarial role that was all too often, more partisan, than constructive.
Two examples will suffice:
First, the Obama White House was attacked for not doing enough to protect Iraqi Christians. From 2003 to 2008, during the Bush administration, when the Christian community in Iraq was ethnically cleansed from 1.4 million to 400,000, USCIRF ignored what was going on in Iraq and was silent on the persecution of these Christians. It wasn’t until Obama was in office before USCIRF found its voice.
Second, members and former members of USCIRF widely criticised the Obama administration for discriminating against Syrian Christian refugees. After much hue and cry, USCIRF commissioned a study to examine this charge. The study found that while the numbers were correct, there were underlying factors demonstrating that discrimination was not a factor. Syrian Christians did not flee the country and many of those who fled went to Lebanon or Jordan where they were taken in by communities with whom they had familial ties or by churches with which they were affiliated. Also, a large number of Christians who did want to leave were able to come to the US or Europe as part of the family unification provision of US immigration law.
In the two years since my term on the commission ended, little has changed. Unfortunately, the new appointments to USCIRF will only take this dysfunctional and counterproductive entity from bad to worse. Individuals who have claimed that Islam is incompatible with “American values”, who have warned against the admittance of Muslim immigrants to the US, and who find Islam inherently violent can only cause further damage to an already damaged partisan enterprise.