ICSA Annual Conference: Former members' process of recognizing and coping with experience of coercive control in religious cultic groups

ICSA Annual Conference: Former members' process of recognizing and coping with experience of coercive control in religious cultic groups

Céleste Goguen, Marie-Andrée Pelland; Sunday, June 26, 2022; 12:00 PM-12:50 PM

The aim of this presentation is to analyze the process by which former members recognized and named forms of control, experiences of abuse and experiences of violence during her or his life within a religious cultic group after leaving the group. The analysis will include all forms of control «grounded in relational interactions, namely, behavioural tactics in which perpetrators gain and maintain power over their victims» (Duran and al., 2020: 145). It is also aimed to analyze the informal or formal help or services contacted to cope with the recognized victimization. Research on victimization in cultic groups defines with precision the process of control that can be experienced within cultic groups (Rodriguez-Carbeillera & al., 2015) such as brainwashing (Banisadr, 2014, Stein, 2016) thought reform (Langone, 2017), Bounded Choice (Lalich & McLaren, 2018) or Mind control, BITE model (Hassan, 2021). Some researches document forms of abuse within the group such as neglect, abandonment, isolation, emotional and social deprivation, and sexual abuse (Derocher 2018; Rodriguez-Carbeillera et al., 2015). Other research identifies consequences experienced by former members after they quit a cultic group such as psychological distress (Almendros & Escartin, 2017), difficulties to construct or reconstruct their identity (Matthews & Salazar, 2014 ; Salande & Perkins, 2011 ; Kern & Jungbauer, 2020), difficulties to find a job and to thrive financially (Matthews & Salazar, 2014), fear of being judged judge (Boeri & Boeri, 2009 ; Matthews & Salazar, 2014), even a sense of guilt about behaviours they had within the group (Coates, 2010). But research rarely analyzed the process by which a person’s names and recognizes abusive experiences. To explore that gap in knowledge, the life trajectory and narrative of ten former members were collected. Participants recruited were mostly former members of patriarchal communities where gender roles were traditionally defined (Gillian, 2018).

Céleste Goguen

Céleste Goguen est étudiante à la maitrise en sciences sociales à l'Université de Moncton. Également, elle tient une majeure en criminologie à l'Université de Moncton. Dans le cadre de son projet de fins d'études, elle analyse la victimisation en contexte sectaire au Canada.

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Marie-Andrée Pelland 

Marie-Andrée Pelland, PhD, full professor and director of the sociology and criminology Department, Université de Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. She is also Vice-president of Info-Cult She received her doctorate from the School of Criminology of the Université de Montréal. Her dissertation is entitled, Allegations of Illegal Conduct: Effect on Social Reality of a Community of Canadian Polygamous Mormons. Marie-Andrée Pelland, PhD, est professeure agrégée et directrice du département de sociologie et de criminologie de l’Université de Moncton au Nouveau-Brunswick, Canada. Elle est également vice-présidente d’Info-Secte. Elle a obtenu son diplôme de 3e cycle de l’École de criminologie de l’Université de Montréal. Ses travaux traitent de la question de l’effet des conflits avec la société sur le fonctionnement des groupes religieux minoritaires. Sa thèse s’intitule : « Allégations d’entorse aux lois : Effets sur la réalité sociale d'un groupe de mormons polygames canadiens ».

Synergy Between Cults and Terror Groups

Synergy Between Cults and Terror Groups - Darin Challacombe


ICSA Annual Conference
Friday, June 24th
1:00 PM-1:50 PM

Register

Previous research has shown religious organizations are more similar to terror or violent extremist organizations than they are dissimilar. Individuals who join both usually have similar characteristics. As contemporary researchers have focused more on terror groups than cults, the archival knowledge from cult survivors and years of cult research have not been adequately illuminated as a guide for terror studies. Using the PRISMA methodology (Moher et al., 2009), I examine the literature of religious cult recruitment, terror organization recruitment and radicalization, and illuminate the multiple confluences between them. Just as cults and terror organizations are similar in many other aspects, they also tend to follow similar recruitment patterns. Understanding cult recruitment should be used to assist terror researchers.

Darin Challacombe

Fort Hays State University

Mr. Challacombe is a researcher, professor, and author in the field of terrorism. His main research focus has been on domestic terrorism and structure professional judgement tools, especially the TRAP-18 (Meloy & Gill, 2016). Mr. Challacombe has a Ph.D. in Social Psychology and is on the faculty for Fort Hays State University. Mr. Challacombe has previous real-world experience in terrorism as a senior intelligence analyst for a United States agency. His other research focuses involve personality changes and attraction.

Register: https://whova.com/web/icsaa_202207/

CultNEWS101 Articles: 4/13/2021: Religious Trauma, PTSD, Recovery, GraceLife Church, Covid, Religious Freedom, Canada, Bountiful, FLDS, Polygamy

Religious Trauma, PTSD, Recovery, GraceLife Church, Covid, Religious Freedom, Canada, Bountiful, FLDS, Polygamy

The New Republic: Can Religion Give You PTSD?

" ... Williamson had grown up believing that complementarianism (the belief men and women complement each other through distinct and separate roles) and purity culture (which demands that women remain sexless virgins until marriage) were divine ordinance. "You're taught that your body belongs to God, then your dad, then your husband," she said. "Your dad protects your virginity, then you get married and your dad gives you to your husband, and your body belongs to him." (Purity culture also assumes men to be lustful and places the responsibility on women to avoid tempting them sexually—an issue spotlighted by the Atlanta mass shooting earlier this month, allegedly carried out by a member of a conservative Baptist church with a "religious mania" who claimed he had been plagued by "sexual addiction.")

Williamson believes this worldview caused her to stay for several years in an abusive relationship with a man who pressured her to have all kinds of nonvaginal sex. Williamson didn't want to but didn't have a way to say it. She recalls hearing one verse from Jeremiah over and over: The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? "The message was: Don't listen to your feelings," she said. So when her boyfriend told her, "prove to me from the Bible that it's wrong to give head," Williamson was at a loss: She couldn't.

"There are jokes about doing anal for Jesus, and yeah, that's pretty much how it was," she told me. "I felt awful about it as we were doing those things, and after." After seeing him, she would sit in her car and cry. "I didn't know that wasn't normal."

It wasn't just the abusive relationship that traumatized Williamson. It was the entire ideology of purity, wrapped up with her sense of identity, self-worth, and relationship to God. "I didn't know what it meant to be a woman," she said. "I had no concept of gender identity beyond evangelicalism."

Religious trauma, like sexual trauma, is not new. "It's as old as religion," according to Religious Trauma Institute co-founder Brian Peck. Peck grew up in a conservative evangelical family and attended a K-12 Christian school. He began the process of leaving his religion more than two decades ago, when he was in his twenties. Along the way, he met other former evangelicals who were living in opposition to their former beliefs, "feeling stuck in this inflexible way that I was familiar with."

"This led me to realizing it's not just a cognitive problem that people experience," said Peck, now a licensed clinical social worker based in Boise, Idaho. "A lot of the deconstruction journey is a cognitive process. It's about reading and studying. It's about beliefs and ideas: Are they true or not true? During that process, we often lose sight of the fact that we're social mammals living in bodies, and the way that trauma impacts us is not just in our head, it's in our body as well."

In recent years, mental health practitioners have begun the work of cataloging and defining religious trauma. Many of them, like Peck and Anderson, grew up in fundamentalist or conservative religious environments.

In 1993, psychologist Marlene Winell published Leaving the Fold, a self-help book for former Christian fundamentalists deciding to forsake their religion. Winell, who refers to herself as a "recovering fundamentalist," coined the term "religious trauma syndrome" more than a decade ago. It's "the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination," Winell has written.

Psychologist Darrel Ray founded the nonprofit Recovering From Religion in 2009 as a resource for people doubting or leaving their faith. In 2012, he launched the Secular Therapy Project, a database of nearly 500 vetted secular therapists who will not tell clients they just need to pray more."

Religion Watch: Former evangelicals find trauma and media spotlight

" ... The self-help therapeutic nature of the current ex-evangelical movement has its roots back in the 1980s with the formation of Fundamentalists Anonymous. Kraft notes that in 1993 psychologist Marlene Winell published Leaving the Fold, a self-help book for former Christian fundamentalists deciding to forsake their religion. Winell coined the term "religious trauma syndrome," defining it as "the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination." Like Fundamentalists Anonymous, which emerged during the rise of the Moral Majority in the 1980s, the current movement of ex-evangelicals is shaped by and engaged in politics in the Trump and post-Trump era. Kraft cites political scientist Paul A. Djupe, who estimates that just over 20 percent of American evangelicals, or eight million people, left their churches between 2016 and 2020. "It's a pretty sizable number, and of course they're really loud on Twitter," Djupe said"

CTVNews: Protesters spend night outside locked GraceLife, Alta., church

" ... Alberta Health Services said it "physically closed" the building and will be preventing access to it until GraceLife "can demonstrate the ability to comply with Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health's restrictions."

Mounties were called in to enforce the closure.

Coates was charged – and jailed for nearly seven weeks – for refusing to comply with Alberta's public health orders, and the church as an entity was charged itself earlier in the year and ordered to close by AHS.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, who is representing Coates and GraceLife in court, called the Wednesday closure a denial of charter freedoms."

St. George News: New memoir on growing up in polygamy to be featured in virtual event hosted by St. George bookstore

" ... Canadian author Mary Jayne Blackmore recently published her memoir, a story that recounts lessons she learned about feminism from her polygamist grandmothers. The book is featured on a St. George bookstore website and will host a virtual event April 17.

In an email to St. George News, Blackmore described her book, "Balancing Bountiful," as a story about both the light and darkness of growing up in a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community in Bountiful, British Columbia.

"It's about overcoming the adversity I faced in my life, and how it made me the strong woman I am today," she wrote."

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Crimea: Religious Freedom Abuses Must Stop

United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (press release)

March 18, 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Two years ago today, Russia unlawfully annexed the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, cynically using the Orthodox “culture, civilization, and human values” that Russia and Ukraine supposedly share to justify this invasion. On this anniversary, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reiterates its concern about Russian authorities’ violations of religious freedom in Crimea, and urges the international community to take a stand against these abuses.

“The human rights and religious freedom situation in Crimea has deteriorated dramatically since the illegal March 2014 Russian occupation,” said USCIRF Chairman Robert P. George. “Religious minority communities, particularly Muslim Crimean Tatars, suffer because of Russia’s application of its more restrictive criminal and administrative codes, notably its onerous registration requirements and notorious anti-extremism law.”

No religious community remains unscathed, particularly given the Kremlin’s application of its extremism law in Crimea.  Russian authorities have raided Tatar homes, mosques, media outlets, and schools, and the Kingdom Halls of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They also have detained imams and fined individuals simply for possessing Islamic and Jehovah’s Witness text which are banned under the extremism law. Twelve Crimean Tatars, accused by Russian authorities of being members of a banned terrorist organization, were arrested in February 2016 after speaking with international human rights monitors about the repression of Tatars in Crimea.

In order to gain legal operating status, Russia requires all Crimean religious communities registered with the Ukrainian state to re-register under Russia’s more stringent requirements. Of the over 1,500 religious communities with Ukrainian legal status, only 400 were re-registered under Russian authority. Unregistered religious groups, including the Ukrainian Catholic Church – banned by the Kremlin 70 years ago  – and  Armenian Apostolic parishes, cannot open bank accounts, own property, issue invitations to foreign guests, and publish literature.  In view of the Kremlin’s hostility, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kiev Patriarchate did not even apply for registration.

“Russia has spread its net of intolerance to Crimea and freedom of religion or belief has been its victim.  The international community must not be silent in the face of these abuses,” said Chairman George. “Moscow must reform its anti-extremism law, cease its application to Crimea, grant legal status to the 1,500 religious groups that operated before the Russian annexation, and stop harassing religious minorities and those the Moscow Patriarchate views as rivals. USCIRF also urges the U.S. government to apply provisions of the Magnitsky Act and continue to identify Russian government officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom and human rights, freeze their assets, and bar their entry into the United States.”

USCIRF placed Russia on its Tier 2 list in its 2015 Annual Report. Tier 2 countries are those in which the violations the government engages in or tolerates are serious and characterized by at least one of the elements of IRFA’s “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” standard. For more information, see the Russia chapter in USCIRF’s 2015 Annual Report.

 

To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at media@uscirf.gov or 202-786-0613.

 

http://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/press-releases/crimea-religious-freedom-abuses-must-stop

Where Your Religion Can Still Send You to Jail

Mary Ann Glendon Katrina Lantos Swett
National Interest
December 10, 2015

December 10 marks Human Rights Day, the sixty-seventh anniversary of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Unfortunately fundamental rights, including religious freedom, are still being violated worldwide.

Among the worst abusers are non-state actors like ISIL and other violent religious extremist groups. In Syria and Iraq, ISIL has persecuted Shia and Sunni Muslims alike, while reserving some of its worst depredations for Yazidis and Christians. From summary executions to forced conversions, rape to sexual enslavement, abducted children to destroyed houses of worship, attacks on these communities—among the oldest in the Middle East—are part of a systematic effort to erase their presence.

State actors from China to Iran to Uzbekistan continue their own assault on freedom: witness the persistent presence and gross mistreatment of prisoners of conscience.

In order to spotlight the plight of these prisoners, as well as the repressive laws and policies of the governments holding them, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives in conjunction with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on which we serve, and Amnesty International USA, created the Defending Freedoms Project. Through this project, members of Congress select prisoners in order to call culpable governments to account and ultimately help free these prisoners.

Among these governments are those USCIRF has recommended to the State Department for designation as “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs, marking them as some of the world’s worst religious freedom abusers.

China, for example, imposed the draconian sentence of life imprisonment on Ilham Tohti in September 2014 for “separatism,” due to his peaceful activism on behalf of his fellow Uighur Muslims, whom the government persecutes relentlessly. Tohti was an economics professor in Beijing, where he was known for his research on Uighur-Han relations as well as his activism for the implementation of regional autonomy in Xinjiang.

Eritrea has been holding Orthodox Patriarch Abune Antonios since 2007 at an undisclosed location, preventing him from communicating with the outside world while reportedly denying him medical care. In 2006, Eritrea’s government had deposed him from his position as head of the Eritrean Orthodox Church and placed him under house arrest, ironically after he protested meddling in his church’s affairs. Among the accusations against the patriarch were his reluctance to excommunicate 3,000 members of an Orthodox Sunday School movement and his demands that the regime release imprisoned human rights activists accused of treason.

Uzbekistan holds up to 12,000 prisoners, mostly for the independent practice of Islam. In April 2010 it sentenced two sisters, Mehriniso and Zulkhumor Hamdamova, to prison terms of seven and six-and-half years, respectively, and their relative Shahlo Rakhmonova to a six-and-a-half-year term, for conducting private Muslim religious instruction of girls. Mehriniso was sentenced despite being a teacher for a government-approved women’s religion course, and is being held in deplorable conditions while battling cancer.

China, Eritrea and Uzbekistan exemplify nations in which secular authoritarian tyrannies refuse to accept the independence of religious communities, resulting in serious religious freedom violations against members of groups ranging from Catholics and Evangelicals, to Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses, to Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong.

Other nations, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, have religiously authoritarian governments which enthrone a single religious group or interpretation while persecuting dissenting religious communities or individuals.

Iran sentenced Pastor Saeed Abedini in January 2012 to an eight-year prison term for participating in Iran’s house church movement. And for more than seven-and-a-half years, seven leaders of Iran’s Baha’i community have been imprisoned: Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Behrouz Tavakkoli, Vahid Tizfahm, Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet.

In Saudi Arabia, Raif Badawi, founder and editor of the Free Saudi Liberals Web site, was sentenced in 2013 to 600 lashes and seven years in prison, and ordered to shut down his site. After appealing his conviction for blasphemy and other charges, he was given a new sentence in 2014 of ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes. Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair—a human rights activist and the head of the group “Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia”—was given a fifteen-year sentence.

Unfortunately, tyrannies aren’t the only governments which perpetrate or tolerate severe religious freedom abuses. Pakistan, an electoral democracy, has more people on death row or serving life sentences for blasphemy than any other nation. Among them is Aasia Bibi, a Catholic mother sentenced to death in 2010 for blasphemy. In October 2014, her appeal was dismissed and her death sentence upheld. This summer, Pakistan’s Supreme Court accepted her appeal and suspended her death sentence. No hearing date has been set.

As we commemorate Human Rights Day, it is time for the world community to rededicate itself to religious freedom and other rights, hold abusers accountable and demand the release of these and other prisoners of conscience.

Mary Ann Glendon and Katrina Lantos Swett are Commissioners on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/where-your-religion-can-still-send-you-jail-14569

How to Defeat Religious Violence

Wall Street Journal
JONATHAN SACKS
October 2, 2015

The West was caught unprepared by the rise of Islamic State, as it was a decade and a half ago by the attacks of al Qaeda and as the Soviet Union was by the determination of the mujahedeen of Afghanistan in the 1980s. These are among the worst failures of political intelligence in modern times, and the consequences have been disastrous.

The unpreparedness was not accidental. It happened because of a blind spot in the secular mind: the inability to see the elemental, world-shaking power of religion when hijacked by politics. Ever since the rise of modern science, intellectuals have been convinced that faith is in intensive care, about to die or at least rendered harmless by exclusion from the public square.

But not all regions of the world have gone through this process. Not all religions have allowed themselves to be excluded from the public square. And when secular revolutions fail, we should know by now that we can expect religious counterrevolutions.

Religion has lately demanded our attention not as a still, small voice but as a whirlwind. If Isaiah’s prophecy that nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares” is to be fulfilled, then the essential task now is to think through the connection between religion and violence.

Three answers have emerged in recent years. The first: Religion is the major source of violence. Therefore, if we seek a more peaceful world, we should abolish religion. The second: Religion is not a source of violence. It may be used by manipulative leaders to motivate people to wage wars precisely because it inspires people to heroic acts of self-sacrifice, but religion itself teaches us to love and forgive, not to hate and fight. The third: Their religion, yes; our religion, no. We are for peace. They are for war.

None of these is true. As for the first, Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod surveyed 1,800 conflicts for their “Encyclopedia of Wars” and found that less than 10% involved religion. A “God and War” audit commissioned by the BBC found that religion played some part in 40% of major wars over the past three millennia, but usually a minor one.

The second answer is misguided. When terrorist or military groups invoke holy war, define their battle as a struggle against Satan, condemn unbelievers to death and commit murder while declaring that “God is great,” it is absurd to deny that they are acting on religious motives. Religions seek peace, but on their own terms.

The third is a classic instance of in-group bias. Groups, like individuals, have a need for self-esteem, and they will interpret facts to confirm their sense of superiority. Judaism, Christianity and Islam define themselves as religions of peace, yet they have all initiated violence at some points in their history.

My concern here is less the general connection between religion and violence than the specific challenge of politicized religious extremism in the 21st century. The re-emergence of religion as a global force caught the West unprotected and unprepared because it was in the grip of a narrative that told a quite different story.

It is said that 1989, the year of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, marked the final act of an extended drama in which first religion, then political ideology, died after a prolonged period in intensive care. The age of the true believer, religious or secular, was over. In its place had come the market economy and the liberal democratic state, in which individuals and their right to live as they chose took priority over all creeds and codes. It was the last chapter of a story that began in the 17th century, the last great age of wars of religion.

What the secularists forgot is that Homo sapiens is the meaning-seeking animal. If there is one thing the great institutions of the modern world do not do, it is to provide meaning. Science tells us how but not why. Technology gives us power but cannot guide us as to how to use that power. The market gives us choices but leaves us uninstructed as to how to make those choices. The liberal democratic state gives us freedom to live as we choose but refuses, on principle, to guide us as to how to choose.

Science, technology, the free market and the liberal democratic state have enabled us to reach unprecedented achievements in knowledge, freedom, life expectancy and affluence. They are among the greatest achievements of human civilization and are to be defended and cherished.

But they do not answer the three questions that every reflective individual will ask at some time in his or her life: Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? The result is that the 21st century has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.

Religion has returned because it is hard to live without meaning. That is why no society has survived for long without either a religion or a substitute for religion. The 20th century showed, brutally and definitively, that the great modern substitutes for religion—nation, race, political ideology—are no less likely to offer human sacrifices to their surrogate deities.

The religion that has returned is not the gentle, quietist and ecumenical form that we in the West have increasingly come to expect. Instead it is religion at its most adversarial and aggressive. It is the greatest threat to freedom in the postmodern world. It is the face of what I call “altruistic evil” in our time: evil committed in a sacred cause, in the name of high ideals.

The 21st century will be more religious than the 20th for several reasons. First is that, in many ways, religion is better adapted to a world of global instantaneous communication than are nation states and existing political institutions.

Second is the failure of Western societies after World War II to address the most fundamental of human needs: the search for identity. The world’s great faiths offer meaning, direction, a code of conduct and a set of rules for the moral and spiritual life in ways that the free-market, liberal democratic West does not.
The third reason has to do with demography. World-wide, the most religious groups have the highest birthrates. Over the next half-century, as Eric Kaufmann has documented in his book “Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?”, there will be a massive transformation in the religious makeup of much of the world, with Europe leading the way. With the sole exception of the U.S., the West is failing to heed the Darwinian imperative of passing on its genes to the next generation.

This leaves us little choice but to re-examine the theology that leads to violent conflict in the first place. If we do not do the theological work, we will face a continuation of the terror that has marked our century thus far, for it has no other natural end.

The challenge is not only to Islam but also to Judaism and Christianity. None of the great religions can say, in unflinching self-knowledge, “Our hands never shed innocent blood.”

As Jews, Christians and Muslims, we have to be prepared to ask the most uncomfortable questions. Does the God of Abraham want his disciples to kill for his sake? Does he demand human sacrifice? Does he rejoice in holy war? Does he want us to hate our enemies and terrorize unbelievers? Have we read our sacred texts correctly? What is God saying to us, here, now? We are not prophets but we are their heirs, and we are not bereft of guidance on these fateful issues.

As one who values market economics and liberal democratic politics, I fear that the West doesn’t fully understand the power of the forces that oppose it. Passions are at play that run deeper and stronger than any calculation of interests. Reason alone will not win this battle. Nor will invocations of words like “freedom” and “democracy.” To some, they sound like compelling ideals, but to others, they are the problem against which they are fighting, not the solution they embrace.

Today Jews, Christians and Muslims must stand together, in defense of humanity, the sanctity of life, religious freedom and the honor of God himself. The real clash of the 21st century will not be between civilizations or religions but within them. It will be between those who accept and those who reject the separation of religion and power.

What then should we do? We must put the same long-term planning into strengthening religious freedom as was put into the spread of religious extremism. The proponents of radical Islam have worked for decades to marginalize the more open, gracious, intellectual and mystical traditions that in the past were the source of Islam’s greatness.

It has been a strategy remarkable for its long time-horizon, precision, patience and dedication. If moderation and religious freedom are to prevail, they will require no less. We must train a generation of religious leaders and educators who embrace the world in its diversity and sacred texts in their maximal generosity.

There must be an international campaign against the teaching and preaching of hate. Education in many Islamic countries remains a disgrace. If children continue to be taught that nonbelievers are destined for hell and that Christians and Jews are the greater and lesser Satan, if radio, television, websites and social media pour out a nonstop stream of paranoia and incitement, then Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its commitment to religious freedom, will mean nothing. All the military interventions in the world will not stop the violence.

We need to recover the absolute values that make Abrahamic monotheism the humanizing force it has been at its best: the sanctity of life, the dignity of the individual, the twin imperatives of justice and compassion, the insistence on peaceful modes of resolving conflicts, forgiveness for the injuries of the past and devotion to a future in which all the children of the world can live together in grace and peace.

These are the ideals on which Jews, Christians and Muslims can converge, widening their embrace to include those of other faiths and none. This does not mean that human nature will change, or that politics will cease to be an arena of conflict. All it means is that politics will remain politics and not become religion.
We also need to insist on the simplest moral principle of all: the principle of reciprocal altruism, otherwise known as tit-for-tat. This says: As you behave to others, so will others behave to you. If you seek respect, you must give respect. If you ask for tolerance, you must demonstrate tolerance. If you wish not to be offended, then you must make sure you do not offend.

Wars are won by weapons, but it takes ideas to win a peace. To be a child of Abraham is to learn to respect the other children of Abraham even if their way is not ours, their covenant not ours, their understanding of God different from ours. Our common humanity must precedes our religious differences.

Yes, there are passages in the sacred scriptures of each of the Abrahamic monotheisms that, interpreted literally, can lead to hatred, cruelty and war. But Judaism, Christianity and Islam all contain interpretive traditions that in the past have read them in the larger context of coexistence, respect for difference and the pursuit of peace, and can do so today. Fundamentalism—text without context, and application without interpretation—is not faith but an aberration of faith.

With the rise of radical political Islam, our world has become suddenly dangerous not only to Jews, Christians and others but to Muslims who find themselves on the wrong side of the Sunni-Shiite divide. There will be military and political responses, but there must also be a religious one, or the others will fail.

We must raise a generation of young Jews, Christians, Muslims and others to know that it is not piety but sacrilege to kill in the name of the God of life, hate in the name of the God of love, wage war in the name of the God of peace, and practice cruelty in the name of the God of compassion.

Now is the time for us to say what we have failed to say in the past: We are all the children of Abraham. We are precious in the sight of God. We are blessed. And to be blessed, no one has to be cursed. God’s love does not work that way. God is calling us to let go of hate and the preaching of hate, and to live at last as brothers and sisters, true to our faith and a blessing to others regardless of their faith, honoring God’s name by honoring his image, humankind.

Lord Sacks is the former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. This essay is adapted from his new book, “Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence,” which will be published by Schocken on Oct. 13.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-defeat-religious-violence-1443798275

Sect chief should apologise in person at Akal Takht: Radical Sikh groups

October 2, 2015

IANS

Daijiworld
Radical Sikh leaders on Friday termed "a sham" controversial Dera Sacha Sauda sect chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's offer to visit the Golden Temple complex and demanded that he should instead appear before the Akal Takht, Sikh religion's highest temporal seat, to offer his apology.

"Gurmeet Ram Rahim stating that he was willing to visit Golden Temple for peace holds no water as anyone can visit it to pay obeisance irrespective of religion, caste and creed. He must come at Akal Takht in person and tender apology in clear words for his blasphemous act and pledge not to repeat the same in future," Dal Khalsa leaders H.S. Dhami and Kanwarpal Singh said in a statement.

They said that the pardon drama enacted by the Akal Takht and the subsequent setting up of a committee to review the decision to pardon the sect chief was a diversionary tactic to defuse anger among Sikhs.

"What's the utility of constituting the committee after issuing a clean chit to the head of heretical cult for his sacrilegious act?" they asked.

Leaders of these organisations accused the Sikh clergy of bowing to the diktats of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal to pardon the sect chief.

A controversy has erupted after the Akal Takht last Thursday said it had pardoned the sect chief after he submitted a written "apology".

The Dera head courted controversy in May 2007 when he was accused of hurting the religious sentiments of the Sikhs by wearing, in an advertisement, an attire resembling that of the 10th Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh.

The controversy led to violent clashes between Sikhs and the sect followers, particularly in southwest Punjab.

The Akali Dal leadership, including the Badals, and Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president Avtar Singh Makkar have said the Akal Takht's decision on the sect chief's pardon issue was final and the Sikh community should accept it.

The timing of the pardon is being linked to the state assembly elections in early 2017 and the interest of the Akali Dal leadership to build a rapport with the sect chief since he has lakhs of followers in Punjab.

The sect chief has submitted a written apology to the Akal Takht, stating that he had no intention of showing disrespect to the Sikh Gurus or hurt the religious sentiments of the Sikh community.

The apology and the pardon brought to an end a bitter controversy, which lasted for over eight years, and led to strained relations between the Sikh clergy and community on one side and the sect chief and his followers on the other.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim, who has millions of followers in Punjab and Haryana, resides in his sprawling campus near Sirsa town in Haryana, 275 km from Chandigarh.

Following the clashes, the sect chief had initially offered to hold talks with Sikh leaders but he was asked to first apologise for his actions.

http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=359487

Defending Religion From Itself

KNOX THAMES
FOREIGN POLICY

July 30, 2015

There is a growing threat to religious freedom around the globe. In an earlier era, the greatest hostility to faith came from secular autocracies or totalitarian regimes. But that has changed. Today, the most active persecutors of religious minorities and dissenters are religious extremists. In this still-young century, the world has witnessed a sharp rise in the number of extremist groups who attack the religious “other” for perceived transgressions.

No longer are states the sole perpetrator of abuses, as was the case during the Cold War. In the Middle East, the Islamic State has become the chief exemplar of a terrorist organization espousing a vile, religiously inspired ideology that despises diversity of thought and belief. Its genocidal attacks on the Yazidis almost one year ago and the choice “convert or die” it offers to Christians (also documented in a recent and much-discussed article in the New York Times) are gruesome evidence of its intentions. But Muslims aren’t safe, either. Shiite Muslims or dissenting Sunnis can also find themselves facing death sentences.

The Middle East is not the only region grappling with this new trend. In South Asia, the Taliban (in both its Afghan and Pakistani versions) have struck at Christians and other non-Muslims, while also viciously attacking other Islamic sects for being the “wrong” kind of Muslim. In Burma, the 969 movement of radical Buddhist monks has incited mob attacks against Rohingya Muslims. And these extremist monks are following the same agenda as like-minded Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka, who have targeted Christians and Muslims in that small island nation.

In Africa, too, violent religious extremism can be found in a growing number of countries. The terrorist organization Boko Haram has assaulted both churches and mosques who speak out against its ideology and attacks. In the Central African Republic, religiously affiliated militias have been responsible for mass violence in Christian and Muslim communities. Extremists in various other parts of the continent have announced the founding of Islamic State franchises.

This new reality presents a vexing challenge to the international community and its commitment to human rights and religious freedom. These groups are often outside the reach of normal diplomatic channels. They don’t care what the world thinks, as they are actively trying to upend the international order.

In response, governments need to develop fresh approaches. There is no single recipe for fighting religious bigotry. Violent religious extremism grows out of many factors and is often situation-specific. So the response must be flexible, comprehensive, and coordinated, not fragmented across different bureaus and agencies. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (of which I am director of policy and research) proposed a series of changes to U.S. law and policy last year that would better position the United States to engage on these issues. The Commission’s recommendations include expanding the “country of particular concern” designation of worst religious-freedom violators to include failed states and nonstate actors, increasing funding for fieldwork grants, and including messaging on the importance of religious freedom and tolerance in strategic communications programs.

Concerns about religious freedom are interwoven with many of the greatest foreign-policy challenges facing the United States. President Barack Obama recognized this in his speech at the Countering Violent Extremism summit in February, noting that genuine democracy and political stability require “freedom of religion — because when people are free to practice their faith as they choose, it helps hold diverse societies together.”

Better incorporating promotion of freedom of religion into American efforts to confront ISIS and others extremists can enhance efforts to fight terrorism. Religious freedom is ultimately about freedom of thought — the right of individuals to believe what they want and to act on those beliefs in peaceful and noncoercive ways. Environments that support religious freedom are therefore better positioned to reject violent ideologies. Religious freedom is certainly not a cure-all. But it can make counter-terrorism efforts more durable by protecting civic space for diversity of thought and belief.

But this cannot be the United States’ fight alone. The challenges are transnational, with extremist groups linked across borders through ideology and criminality. To respond effectively, countries that value diversity of thought and belief must, too, work in coalition. Already there are multinational efforts against extremism and terrorism, such as the Global Counterterrorism Forum. But other efforts are under way to build coalitions of like-minded governments to advance freedom of religion. A network of legislators from around the world has leveraged the political capital of its individual members to protect religious freedom in places like Pakistan, Burma, and Indonesia. The European Union’s new human rights action plan places a greater emphasis on promoting religious freedom and protecting religious minorities, more tightly focusing the 28-nation union on this issue.

And while the United States and other governments need new proactive policies, they must also discourage bad policies by partner governments that fuel extremism. Separate studies by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life have shown that, while the world is overwhelmingly religious, government restrictions on the free practice of religion are increasing. This is a recipe for increased violations and instability. In many places, heavy-handed government responses have made martyrs out of extremists and created grievances that fuel insurgencies. The recently released State Department country reports on terrorism noted this dynamic, especially in reference to several Central Asian states. To name but one example, the report on Tajikistan underscored the “negative impact on religious freedoms” of the government’s efforts to stem violent religious extremism, such as banning women and minors from attending mosques. These abuses can trigger violent reactions. In 2010, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan killed 25 Tajik soldiers in response to the country’s oppressive religion law, which limits the free practice of Islam.

Extremist groups can also find inspiration from regressive laws in the nations where they operate. Take the example of blasphemy laws. When such laws are on the books, extremists often feel emboldened to enforce them through their own rough justice. In Pakistan, which leads the world in the number of people jailed for this so-called “crime,” the blasphemy law has fueled extremist violence against human rights defenders and has instigated mob attacks against Christians and Ahmadi Muslims.

In an ironic twist, blasphemy laws empower the very extremists governments claim to be fighting against.

Religious extremists are killing religious minorities and dissenting members of their own faith, and they represent a clear and present danger to diversity of thought and belief. These violent groups will, for the foreseeable future, present a major challenge to the United States and its allies for reasons of national security, humanitarian concerns, and human rights. To be sure, secular authoritarian regimes like North Korea and Eritrea will continue their abusive ways, and the United States and the international community should redouble their efforts to press for authoritarian regimes to reform. But the rise of violent religious extremism requires a new approach — one where governments recognize the problem, pivot quickly, and work in concert to meet this challenge.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/30/defending-religion-from-itself/