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Freedom of religion did not become a legal reality until the modern era (e.g., through the First Amendment), and even as late as the Second World War, one global study declared a total absence of “a generally accepted postulate of international law that every State is under legal obligation to accord religious liberty within its jurisdiction.” However, in the relatively brief historical period since, freedom of religion or belief has become just such an accepted postulate of international law. This chapter explores key elements of that development, beginning with an examination of religious liberty provisions in international human rights law—the major documents and treaties, as well as issues of special concern. Next, it briefly considers two additional sources of international rights monitoring and enforcement: the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and the European Court of Human Rights. Finally, it discusses the twentieth-century contributions of religious institutions to religious liberty, focusing on the role of the Catholic Church in elaborating a moral foundation for religious freedom and championing it as a pathway to peace.

The book begins with an apostasy trial in democratic Afghanistan. The episode reveals a serious deficit in U.S. foreign policy: in a world increasingly influenced by religion, American diplomacy lacks the policy mandate, habits of thought, training or bureaucratic structure to engage religious ideas and actors. Beset by confusion, and despite supposedly clarifying events such as the 9/11 attacks, the foreign affairs establishment routinely acts in a “secularistic” fashion, instinctively removing religion from the policy table. The disarray does not admit of easy solution; it is fed by attitudes from across the ideological spectrum of American society. There is, however, a potentially fruitful remedy at hand: the U.S. policy of promoting international religious freedom. Properly refurbished and energized, that policy could dramatically increase the capacity of American diplomacy to advance vital U.S. interests abroad and at home. A key to success will be promoting religious freedom properly understood.

Recognizing that the construction and institutionalization of religious liberty rights is at once a political and a legal project, this chapter proceeds in two main sections. The first focuses on the political and socio-cultural processes in Muslim states that have interacted over time to institutionalize Islamic law and identity at national and transnational levels. This history is essential, not least because the modern constitutions of many relevant states were adopted during the 1970s and 1980s amidst struggles marked by Arab nationalism, Islamism, and Islamic identity formation. Hence, in the second section, the constitutional consequences of these historical-political processes are explored via specific examination of religious liberty in the laws and practices of four influential countries—Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan.

Under the presidency of George W. Bush, this chapter argues, religious identities and ethical commitments had a significant impact on U.S. foreign policy—and an even greater impact on perceptions of that policy abroad. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 and the attacks of September 11, 2001, were critical junctures. The end of the cold war and religious mobilization in U.S. politics coincided with heightened awareness of religious persecution across many countries, culminating in the 1998 legislation. And in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S., the struggle against Islamic radicalism became both a foreign policy priority and a rallying cry in U.S. domestic politics. The worldwide perception of a religious impetus in U.S. foreign policy has had a negative impact on America's standing in the world.

This chapter discusses the early modern origins of freedom of religion in the Protestant Reformation (including the contributions of Martin Luther and John Calvin), the genesis of the “American constitutional experiment in religious liberty” (noting, especially, the influence of Roger Williams, John Locke, and James Madison), and the formulation of religious freedom in and subsequent jurisprudence of the First Amendment (e.g., the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses).

While many of George Washington’s contemporaries portrayed him as a devout Christian, Thomas Jefferson’s foes depicted him as an infidel and an atheist. Given how similar their religious views and practices were, these radically different appraisals of Washington and Jefferson are ironic. Religion mesmerized, tantalized, alarmed, and sometimes inspired Jefferson, and he discussed religious issues, movements, and leaders often in his conversation and correspondence and occasionally in his addresses and published writings. Religious issues played a major role in Jefferson’s life and presidency. He wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786) that disestablished the Episcopal Church, enshrined the principle of freedom of conscience, and helped prepare the way for the First Amendment. Since 1947 his metaphor of a “wall of separation” between church and state has dominated constitutional debate over the proper place of religion in public life and policy. Although he repudiated much of orthodox Christianity, the Virginian was a deeply religious man. Jefferson’s alleged lack of faith was a major issue in the hotly contested election of 1800. In an effort to discover the historical Jesus, he devised two different editions of the Gospels for his own use that eliminated all miraculous elements and focused on Christ’s ethical teachings. Although his supporters, his opponents, and academicians have, for the past two centuries, debated the nature of his faith and whether he should be labeled an Episcopalian, a deist, or a Unitarian, many scholars do not recognize how important Jefferson’s religious convictions were to his philosophy of government and career. Jefferson’s character and views of slavery are also examined.

The passage of the 1998 International Religious Freedom (IRF) Act seemed to presage a new chapter in U.S. foreign policy—in effect, the elevation of America's “first freedom” to what many considered its rightful ascendancy in the nation's human rights policy. In retrospect, however, the fault lines in the law's conception and implementation have been quite significant. This chapter examines those weaknesses, including the desire of IRF supporters to bypass the State Department, the perception that the law is Christian-centered, and the concern by liberals that religious freedom should not be elevated to the top of a “hierarchy of human rights.” In describing the hierarchy objection the chapter analyzes the controversial but critical issues of proselytization, and the distinction between religious tolerance and religious freedom. The net result of these and other problems is that U.S. IRF policy has been narrowly construed, ignored by its supporters, and largely ineffective.

This chapter develops three interrelated claims about the politics of governing social difference through religious rights and freedoms. First, conceiving and governing social difference through religious rights singles out individuals and groups for legal protection as religious individuals and collectivities. Second, governing through religious rights shapes how states and other political authorities distinguish groups from each other, often in law. Third, contemporary international religious freedom advocacy emphasizes belief as the core of religion. The chapter unfolds in three parts, each elaborating on various aspects of these claims through a combination of empirical illustrations and theoretical discussion. The first section on the global political production of religious difference draws on an extended discussion of the Rohingya in Myanmar. The second section on the creation of a landscape populated by faith communities and the effects on those excluded from such designations incorporates examples from the Central African Republic, Guatemala, India, and South Sudan. A final section on the mutually supportive relations between religious freedom advocacy, the creation of a believing religious subject, and the ideology of the free religious marketplace builds on the work of anthropologists and religious studies scholars who complicate the notion of belief as the core of religion.

The rise of political Islam in the 1970s and 1980s in reaction to secular Western imperial power had consequences at both the domestic and international levels. Islamists sought to institutionalize their religious authority and political power in state constitutions, which in turn had tangible and often grave effects on the practical and legal status of religious freedom in those countries. Concurrently, the growing power of Islamism, coupled with the rise of national and transnational Islamic identity, inspired efforts to develop Islamic alternatives to Western international law. The resulting agreements—such as the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam—have raised pressing questions about the compatibility of Islam and human rights; the status of women, non-Muslims, and religious freedom in Islamic declarations; the nature of contemporary Islamic international law; and the implications of differences between Western and Islamic formulations for the universality of human rights. These questions are the subject of this chapter.

This introductory chapter discusses first, the relationship between religious liberty and human rights; and second, the global resurgence of religion and its significance for contemporary international law and politics. Religious liberty rights merit special attention in part because they are closely correlated with the observance of other human rights. This connection assumes even greater significance in view of the second point, namely, that the world is experiencing a religious resurgence with profound implications for contemporary international relations. To be more precise, it is not so much that greater numbers of people are religious but rather that their religiosity has acquired new theoretical and empirical salience for international law and politics.

Understanding the law and politics of religious freedom in the Muslim world first requires knowledge of the teachings and traditions of Islam, as well as their significance for Muslim followers. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the principles of Islamic law. It then discusses freedom of religion in Islamic law, covering the rights of religious minorities and apostasy and Islam. This is followed by a discussion of religious liberty and Islamic reformation.

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts about Islamic law and religious freedom. Religious freedom, a crucial aspect of human dignity, is inherently worthy of protection. Moreover, its interdependence with other human rights arguably makes it the linchpin of international human rights law. Muslim reformers are working to infuse their legal, cultural, and political traditions with robust and resonant defenses of religious liberty. It is necessary for Western intellectuals, working in part from within Jewish and Christian traditions, to do the same. If religious liberty is to be secured, if sustainable pluralism of diverse peoples is to be achieved, a theological jurisprudence rooted in love of God and love of neighbor and informed by reason will be required. This is the calling of a world legal tradition.

This chapter describes the most important human rights story since the end of the Cold War, the growth in the U.S. of a broad movement for international human rights that draws in evangelicals, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Baha’is, African-Americans, and feminists. This movement has pushed successfully for legislation and active policy on international religious freedom, Sudan, sexual trafficking, debt forgiveness, AIDS, and North Korea. Despite its repeated successes, it has often been ignored by journalists, or else its programs and personnel have been misstated, so that the broadest coalition in foreign policy is sometimes reduced to the purported politics of the “Christian right.” The result is that this major evolution in American human rights concerns and in U.S. foreign policy has been missed or misunderstood.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book considers the history of state efforts to define and shape forms of religiosity that are understood to be conducive to particular regimes of governance. It offers a focused discussion that brings together several questions and concerns that have not been considered together before to develop three related arguments about these political projects and the fields in which they are deployed. First, it shows how particular constructs of religious freedom, religious tolerance, and the rights of religious minorities are being packaged into political projects and delivered around the world by states and others. Second, it contributes to the literature on religion and international relations by historicizing and politicizing the attempt over the past two decades to incorporate a concern for religion into the study and practice of global politics. Third, the book embeds the study of religion and politics in a series of broader social and interpretive fields by exploring the relation between these international projects and the social, religious, and political contexts in which they are deployed.

This chapter explores the implications of adopting religion as a category to draw together individuals and communities as corporate bodies that are depicted as in need of legal protection to achieve their freedom. It draws on an extended case study of the Alevis in Turkey. Ongoing uncertainty about the legal and religious status of the Alevis opens a space in which to explore claims to the category of religious minority, constructs of religious freedom, and the implications of contemporary legal approaches to managing religious difference. The chapter begins with a short introduction to the Alevis, a social group that was formally constituted as a single community relatively recently as part of the Turkish nation-building project. It then evaluates two legal definitions of Alevism by the Turkish state and the European Court of Human Rights. These distinct institutional contexts produce different constructions of Alevism with significant legal and political implications for arbitrating major social issues in Turkey, such as who is a Muslim, who is a minority, and what is religion.

This chapter focuses on the freedom of religion. On some accounts of religious freedom, religious beliefs deserve a presumptive protection from state influence. The chapter argues against such “static” views of religious freedom, and claims that rights should not entail the absence of public justification. Not only are some religious beliefs publicly relevant, but the state should seek to transform them through its persuasive capacity. In making this argument, the chapter appeals to the ideal of religious freedom itself. Some religious conceptions are at odds with the ideal of religious freedom—suggesting that religious freedom itself requires an account of the public relevance of hateful religious beliefs and a role for state transformation in the realm of religion.