Documents | International Religious Liberty Association

The Journal of the International Religious Liberty Association
1998 Fides et Libertas

Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance

United Nations Human Rights Commission

Geneva

Religious liberty does not seem to have captured the support of all minds. Every religion has a tendency to consider itself as the sole possessor of truth and that it is its task to call all people to this truth. This is not always favorable to inter-religious tolerance. Furthermore, every religion may be tempted to fight against what it qualifies as deviant error, whether in its midst or outside of its religious borders. This, of course, does not favor inter-religious tolerance nor, especially, tolerance of religious minorities.

It is a fact that religious extremism is developing, seemingly placing entire regions of the world in danger. The principal religions are well acquainted with extremism. They are sometimes exposed to terrorist manifestations which do not bypass either those that govern or those that are governed. The interlacing of that which is political and that which is religious, either in a manifest or latent way, continues to support many attitudes and ways of acting, and to nurture tensions and support conflicts.

Though considerable progress has been made on the level of law, real conditions have often remained below the level of juridical evolution and have not known in any way such a rapid evolution as the law itself. This gives all the more reason for concern since these conditions appear at times to be at the source of ambivalence in the negotiations and the political instruments used in dealing with the religious questions. Furthermore, the excesses that have been committed under cover of religious liberty, especially those committed by certain groups (or at least attributed to certain groups), are of such a nature that they provoke reactions with perverse effects, which tend to promote additional intolerance and discrimination toward all those who do not conform to the established order.

It is important in this connection to distinguish between the freedom of belief and the freedom to manifest the belief. While freedom of belief is absolute, the freedom to manifest one’s belief must be subject to certain limitations, as has been underlined by the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

In any case, it is evident that freedom of religion cannot serve as a cover for groups without scruples and, perhaps, without faith. This said, it must be added that the question of the so-called “sects” must be looked at in a careful manner--without passion, without generalization, taking due count of the facts and the elements involved in every case, particularly in the light of established international norms regarding freedom of religion and belief. I believe it is important that a more sustained and careful examination of the sects must take place in the future. But this should not be identified as the same question as dealing with the “new religions.”

“Hatred, intolerance and acts of violence, including those that are motivated by religious extremism” could be of such a nature that they might favor the emergence of situations which might endanger or compromise in one way or another peace and international security and strike at the right of human beings to have peace.

I tend to believe that the preservation of the right to peace should incite to a greater extent the development of international solidarity, with a view to the control of religious extremism, wherever it arises, by defining a minimum of rules and common principles for the conduct and activity in dealing with religious extremism, and then by acting both on the causes and the effects without selectivity or ambivalence.

On another level, it is basic to say that places of worship should be reserved for religious activities, not political; that the legal status of political parties should be defined in such a way that the continuing activities of religions cannot be the object of interference by political variables; and that public schools should be placed outside control of ideology, politics, or partisanship.

One should also underline that all forms of intolerance and discrimination are born in the minds of people. It is, therefore, at this level that any primary action must take place. The role of education--specifically, the school--is essential, even unavoidable. I will never tire of repeating that it is of primordial importance to develop in a consistent way a whole pedagogy of education for the rights of man, for liberty, and tolerance.

The author is senior professor of juridical science, University of Tunis, Ariana, Tunis, Tunisia. Translated from the French. Condensed and edited from an address by Prof. Amor to the IRLA’s Fourth World Congress on Religious Liberty, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1997.

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