SHAME ON
THE INTERNATIONAL
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM COMMISSION
By
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret
of Freedom Institute
On
May 14, 2001, the U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom (CIRF)
issued an addendum to its annual report (http://www.uscirf.gov/reports/01May01/addendum_051501.pdf),
which
was released on May 1. The
addendum
is of interest because it includes Israel. Unfortunately the
discussion of Israel is the
work of a lone member of the commission, fighting a conspiracy
of silence. To
fully appreciate this disgraceful state of
affairs, it is helpful to know the genesis of the commission.
CIRF
is a product of the U.S. Congress. It
was created in response to intense lobbying from Christian
Evangelicals
concerned about restrictions on proslytization, especially in
Muslim countries,
in coordination with a coalition of ex-cold warriors and
Zionists seeking a
tool to use against China and the Muslim world, whose potential
alliance is a
new threat against which Samuel Huntington warned in his
infamous article in Foreign
Affairs. CIRF issues an annual report in May, which
should not be confused
(although it often is) with the somewhat more balanced annual
report issued in
September by the U.S. Dept. of State.
An
effort by Muslims at the time of CIRF’s creation to make sure a
Muslim was
appointed to the commission resulted in the appointment of Dr.
Laila Al-Maryati
to the commission. Dr.
Al-Maryati, the
only American-Muslim in Hilary Clinton’s delegation to the
International
Women’s Conference in Beijing, and had previously served on the
State Dept.’s
Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, survived a Zionist smear
campaign that
sought to remove her from CIRF and she remains the only Muslim
on the
commission.
The
arguments used against this Palestinian-American women at the
time, accusing
her of being an extremist, were absurd and, al-hamdullilah,
did not
prevail. The real
reason for the
Zionists’ frenzy now is apparent in her contribution to the
addendum to this
year’s CIRF report. A
delegation from
the commission traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel. That their reports on
the status of religious
freedom in these three close American allies were placed in an
appendix to the
main report makes manifest one aspect of the double standard: Support America’s
geopolitical ambitions and
your faults will stay our of the main ring in the circus. But ii is clear that
in the case of Israel
the commissioners, save Dr. Al-Maryati, didn’t want the
persecution of Muslim
and Christian Palestinians exposed at all, not even in a
sideshow. As Dr.
Maryati states in the opening
paragraph of her dissent, “The Commission decided that no
statement should be
issued regarding Israel and the Occupied Territories.”
The
commission’s professed reason for its silence is the “complexity
of the
situation” and “differences of opinion.”
Yet the commission does not hesitate to give Sudan prime
place in its
analyses, despite a situation even more complex due to the
complications of
tribal factors in their ongoing civil war.
As for the “differences of opinion,” let’s face the
facts. The
differences of opinion are really
disagreements about whether or not Isarel should be held to the
same standard
as other countries. Neither
the
Zionists, who have no quarrel with the philosophy of Jewish
Supremacy at the
heart of Israel’s apartheid system, nor the Evangelicals, who
see Israel as
having a special divinely ordained place in the historical
approach to a
millennial apocalypse, have any reason to hold Israel to the
same standard as
other countries the conceive denied Israel’s special status.
As
for the report itself, Dr. Maryati has not abused the special
status that her
position as sole author of the dissent might have conferred upon
her. She has
restricted her observations to issues
actually covered during the trip, pre-trip discussions, and the
State
Department’s annual report.
Thus, many
well-documented violations (including the Israeli torture of
American citizens)
are absent from her report.
The members
of the commission who visited Israel were under constraints
putatively due to
increased terrorism and the Israeli bombardment of the Occupied
Territories. This
prevented them from
visiting the Occupied Territories and prevented some potential
witnesses from
traveling to them as well.
Despite these
constraints, Dr. Maryati has presented a concise but systematic
presentation of
such issues as can be understood from the these limited sources. She divides the
discussion into two
parts: (1) status
of citizens of Israel
and (2) conditions faced by Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories (West
Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem).
Within
Israel, there is de jure and de facto
discrimination among the
Jews themselves. For
Muslims and
Christians, the situation is even worse as they are considered
non-nationals. In
addition to
discrimination in government funding of maintenance of holy
places against
them, permission for private restoration of such sites is
routinely
refused. The Law of
Return which grants
automatic right to citizenship of Jews born anywhere in the
world at the same
time denies Palestinians who expelled from their homes in
Palestine in 1948 or
1967 any right to return at all for no other reason than they
are not
Jewish. An issue
that is of grave
concern to Evangelicals as far as Muslim countries are
concerned, legal and
other barriers to proslytism exist in Israel. Although Dr.
Al-Maryati observes
that the law in Israel does not seem to be enforced, it is
nonetheless the case
that harassment and occasional assault of missionaries has, at
least until
recently, gone unprosecuted.
Dr.
Al-Maryati adds that a “significant number of Christians and
Muslims with whom
the Commission delegation met described the dispute” over the
new mosque in
Nazereth “as being exploited by the Israeli government actions
in which
religion is being exploited as a source of division between
Muslims and
Christians.”
Of
course, the situation in the Occupied Territories is even worse. In East Jerusalem
Christians and Muslims are
denied building permits for property they own, are subject to
house
demolitions, and are in constant jeopardy of having their
“permanent resident”
status revoked. Yet,
the acquisition of
property by Israeli Jews is unimpeded (indeed facilitated) even
in the Muslim
and Christian quarters while Muslims and Christians are
prevented from taking
up residence in the Jewish quarter.
Closure is systematically used to deny Muslims and
Christians access to
their holy places and Christian clergy are prevented from
reaching their
parishioners. The
impoverishing effects
of closure are resulting in the closing of religious schools as
parents are
unable to afford tuition. Since
October
of 2000, all Muslim men under 45 are prohibited from worshipping
at the Haram
ash-Sharif on Fridays.
There
are some additional concerns expressed by Dr. Al-Maryati. Since October, 2000,
few if any arrests have
been made in connection with attacks on Christian and Muslim
holy sites, and
the Israeli military itself has “engaged in violence against
holy sites.”
In
her conclusion, Dr. Al-Maryati makes eight common sense
recommendations by
which the U.S. government could urge Israel to obey
international law and end
religious discrimination. That
other
members of the commission should hesitate to be a party to this
moderate call
for tolerance and rule of law should forever be a source of
shame to the Commission
and to the Congress that created it.