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Mercer and Dayna Curry are safely home. But though the faces of
those two dedicated young women have passed from the nightly news
shows, their cause and their plight should not be forgotten. They
had gone to Afghanistan as part of a Christian charitable organization.
They were called by their faith to assist others no matter their
race, creed, or sex. But the Taliban charged them with the heinous
offense of trying to inform people about Christianity. The charge
was a capital one. And when the Taliban said that a crime was capital,
they meant it.
The Taliban's
threats against these Christian aid workers, however, were benign
compared to their treatment of any religious expression — Islam
included — that did not fit their own wretchedly intolerant
model. They required Hindus to wear yellow turbans, and Sikhs a
yellow garment, which, like the imposed yellow star of an earlier
totalitarian regime, branded a people as unworthy of any human respect.
They destroyed ancient Buddhist monuments, with a cynical disdain
for the sensibilities of the followers of that gentle faith. They
forbade holy images of any sort. They beat, imprisoned, and murdered
Muslims who did not dress or pray as commanded. They persecuted
Ismailis. They massacred Shiites.
That contemptible
regime has been defeated, and there are hopeful signs. Muslims in
Kabul shave off their beards. Hindu women wear saris again. Muslim
women change out of the burqa. Shiites assert that they seek no
vengeance. The Northern Alliance Religious Affairs Minister in Kabul
has declared to Hindus, "The dark years are gone. We are ready
to give all rights to every religion."
But will the
new interim government being formed in Bonn "give all rights
to every religion"? The question is central to the cause we
have undertaken.
Freedom of
religion is not just one right among many. It is, in the words of
the Islamic scholar John Kelsay, "the mother of all rights."
When a state recognizes religious liberty, it ipso facto allows
people the right to worship an authority higher than the state.
Religious liberty allows every individual to seek meaning for life
outside of politics. Every totalitarian regime makes war on religion
precisely because it cannot abide any god besides itself. That is
why the greatest guarantee of limited government is freedom of religion.
Moreover, freedom
of religion is the surest guarantee for all other rights. As the
Heritage Foundation's Joe Loconte recently pointed
out, the framers of the American experiment understood the centrality
of freedom of religion. If the government can restrict religion,
Madison declared, it "may sweep away all our other rights."
In his Farewell Address, George Washington grounded security for
property, reputation, and life on the individual's sense of religious
obligation. From de Tocqueville on, it's been held as a given that
liberty to practice one's faith allows religion to flourish to a
far greater degree than any sectarian state could accomplish. When
the state tolerates religious freedom, it sets the standard for
people to learn to tolerate one another's beliefs. And that brings
civil peace and order to a society.
Sad to say,
during the 1990s, when the cruel persecution of religious minorities
— particularly Christians — was growing apace in the Muslim
and Communist world, the Clinton administration did little or nothing
to oppose the brutality. The United States preferred to appease
autocratic regimes as they sought legitimacy on the backs of believers
— with the result that both the extremists' power and hatred
for the United States were increased. It took an insistent and dedicated
Congress to pass the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998.
The act established the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom, and an office of Ambassador-at-Large for Religious
Freedom in the State Department. Countries that violate religious
liberty will no longer have politics to hide behind. In fact, on
November 1, the Commission wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell,
"The Commission believes strongly that the United States needs
to be laying the groundwork now for a future Afghanistan that respects
the rights of all persons, including the right to freedom of religion
and belief, and strengthens elements of religious tolerance."
At the apparent
moment of victory in Afghanistan, we must not allow this opportunity
to slip away. A new, multi-party government is being formed. Short-term
objectives should not distract us from the moral content of our
cause. Yes, there are obstacles. Islam in Afghanistan is heavily
influenced by the conservative Deobandi madrassas in India. Some
fundamentalists in the Northern Alliance want to keep the sharia
as the law of Pakistan. But Nazism, Communism, and imperial Shinto
practice were obstacles too. Yet German, Soviet, and Japanese totalitarianism
were replaced by respect for human rights. Do the people of Afghanistan
deserve any less?
Let us not
repeat the omissions of the past decade. It is time for Congress
to speak again. Congress should insist that before any reconstruction
aid is approved for Afghanistan, the new government there should
affirm legal protection for basic human rights, including most importantly,
freedom of religion.
Since the United
Nations is superintending the formation of the Afghan government,
the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a good
place to start. It is not an American document. It is not a Western
document. It is a document of all peoples and of all nations. Article
18 of the Declaration states, "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."
This principle needs to be given legal status in the new Afghanistan.
Real victory
does not reside in just bringing Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry
safely home. Victory is guaranteeing them a right to go back. It
is guaranteeing every Afghan — whether Sunni, Shiite, Ismaili,
Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or Christian — the right to worship,
in his own way, the God of us all.
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