Tag Archives: Global: Religious Freedom

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The AP reports on a US Apeals Court decision to leave a family of homeschoolers at the mercy of the German Government, even though the Court found that the US Constitution forbids the state from prohibiting homeschooling. The family faces impossible fines and loss of custody of their children if they are returned to Germany. They should have just pretended to be gay.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: Jonathan posted earlier today about Romeike v. Holder (6th Cir. May 14, 2013), which reject German homeschoolers’ asylum claim. The opinion is quite readable and persuasive, and I recommend it to those interested in the subject. But here’s my general thinking (reprised from 2010 post on the original immigration judge decision in the case), and stressing that I’m not an expert on asylum law:

Jonathan Adler reports on the ruling at the Volokh Conspiracy: The relevant legislation applies only to those who have a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). There is a difference between the persecution of a discrete group and the prosecution of those who violate a generally applicable law.

Baptist Press: Alan Sears, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, noted that a key benefit of ADF’s involvement in helping defend religious freedom overseas is “the crucial perspective it gives us” for defending legal rights in America.”

One News Now: Roger Kiska, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, explains the state’s point of view. “They’re absolutely oppressive with regard to parental rights. They believe that the only duty of the parents basically is to give birth and then the child belongs to the state,” he tells American Family News. “So we had known all along that this was going to be something that would have to be taken from Sweden and brought to the European level.” Kiska says the remaining option is to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which has jurisdiction over Sweden. [more]

LifeSiteNews: Roger Kiska, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior legal counsel in Europe, was outraged by the court’s action. “It is beyond belief that a modern civilized country could allow such injustice to continue,” he said. “There is no evidence in the record that justifies the continued separation of this family. We will continue to fight for this family and on behalf of the principle that the European Convention condemns such acts.”

One News Now: Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Roger Kiska contends that the state wants to be the parent of all students, indoctrinating them with the state’s ideology. “I’ve heard statements in Sweden and in France recently that the role of the parent is simply to give birth to a child, and then it’s the state’s duty to educate the child,” Kiska accounts. “That’s absolutely contrary to international law and morality.”

HSLDA: Roger Kiska, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior legal counsel in Europe, was outraged by the court’s action. “It is beyond belief that a modern civilized country could allow such injustice to continue,” he said. “There is no evidence in the record that justifies the continued separation of this family. We will continue to fight for this family and on behalf of the principle that the European Convention condemns such acts.”

MercatorNet.com: But Gotland (province) Social Services persisted, and managed to get a mid-level appeal court to overturn the district court ruling. Now the couple, with the aid of the US-based Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and the Alliance Defending Freedom, have taken their case to the Supreme Court of Sweden. They are being represented by Ruby Harrold-Claesson of the Nordic Committee on Human Rights. . . . Alliance Defending Freedom and HSLDA are encouraging concerned people from all over the world to participate in an HSLDA-sponsored letter-writing campaign that asks the Supreme Court of Sweden to accept the case Johansson v. Gotland Social Services and return Domenic to his parents.

Huffington Post: Home-schooling families in Europe have become a cause celebre for some U.S. conservatives. The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom is working with two Swedish home-schooling families, including Christer and Annie Johansson, who lost custody of 11-year-old Domenic when they refused to enroll him in public school.

CBN (includes video): Alliance Defending Freedom and the Home-School Legal Defense Association have asked the European court of Human Rights to hear the case of a Swedish family heavily fined for home-schooling.

weden’s highest court is being asked to free an 11-year-old boy whom government officials have held in captivity for four years because his parents home-schooled him. Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom and the Home School Legal Defense Association are legal advisors to the parents, who are represented by Ruby Harrold-Claesson of the Nordic Committee on Human Rights.

WorldNetDaily: Swedish parents Annie and Christer Johansson have launched what may be their last hope to see their son again – with an appeal to the Supreme Court of Sweden to overturn a lower court’s decision to end their parental rights over homeschooling . . . he HSLDA has been working on Domenic’s case, along with officials from the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/homeschool-parents-have-1-shot-to-see-son-again/#vPLSHHFWFSdLzt1K.99

Carly Pildis at Policymic: The bill was inspired by the case of Julea Ward, who was expelled from Eastern Michigan University for refusing to counsel LGBT students. She sued the university with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group, with EMU agreeing to a settlement of $75,000.

Steve Williams at Care2.com: However, neither Deberry or Hohenwald authored the bill. Conservative David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, drafted both versions of the bill with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, formally the Alliance Defense Fund, whose anti-gay agenda is well established. The ADF represented a Michigan student named Julea Ward who was expelled from a master’s degree program at Eastern Michigan University for refusing to counsel gay clients or clients who were sexually involved with someone but weren’t married. Ward received a $75,000 settlement last year. Another student, self-avowed devoted Christian Jennifer Keeton . . .

WorldNetDaily: An appeals court panel in Sweden has imposed the “death penalty” on a homeschooling family, granting the state full custody of their son, who famously was “state-napped” from a jetliner in 2009 as the family prepared to move to India. The appeals panel reversed a lower court ruling that granted Annie and Christer Johansson custody of their son, Domenic. But if the decision is not reversed again by the nation’ Supreme Court, the Johansson’s will lose their son, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has been working on the case with the Alliance Defending Freedom . . .

Education News: The teaching of Christianity can be “incoherent” or “too stereotypical”, an academic leading a project to improve lessons in English schools has said.

Religion Clause Blog: On Saturday, President Obama leaves on a 4 day trip to Thailand, Burma and Cambodia. (USA Today).  On Wednesday, in advance of the trip, Katrina Lantos Swett, Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom wrote the President urging him to raise with Burma issues of religious freedom and ethnic and communal violence.

Catholic Culture: Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague is pressing the government of the Czech Republic for a final decision on proposals to compensate the Church for the properties that were confiscated by the country’s Communist regime.

CNSNews: Fanning sectarian tensions in the Gulf, Shi’ite clerics in Iran are criticizing Bahrain’s Sunni monarch for granting the Roman Catholic Church land to build a new church, complaining that he has done so after destroying dozens of Shi’ite mosques during the unrest that erupted there early last year.

Washington Post: More than 250 Pakistani Hindus have arrived in India over the past two weeks bearing tales of religious persecution, according to Indian border officials, fueling perceptions of growing discrimination against minorities in Pakistan.

Religion Clause Blog: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom last Friday released a new report titled The Religion-State Relationship & the Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Comparative Textual Analysis of the Constitutions of Majority Muslim Countries and Other OIC Members.  It surveys the constitutions of 46 Muslim-majority countries and 10 others that are OIC members. According to USIRF’ssummary of the report . . .

AP: Authorities say two pigs’ heads were found hanging outside a mosque in southern France.

Religion Clause Blog: Interfax yesterday reported on a court hearing for Maria Alyokhina, one of the defendants. Alyokhina told the court: . . . As a representative of my generation, I have other questions about the relations between the church and the state, to which I sincerely want to get answers from Father Kirill and count on his wisdom. I thought that the church loves its children, but it turns out that there is a division here, and the church only loves those children who believe in Putin.

Wall Street Journal (via Google): India’s Supreme Court is this week reviewing whether Muslims deserve affirmative action, and this has once again ignited a debate on how the world’s largest democracy treats its biggest minority.

LifeSiteNews: One day after his appointment was announced, the new archbishop-elect of Glasgow has already been attacked in the media for his opposition to same-sex “marriage.” On the day the appointment was made public, Archbishop-elect Philip Tartaglia, a long-time and highly vocal opponent of the homosexualist political agenda, told journalists that he believed he could end up in prison for his views.

Guardian: “Recently in Scotland there was a gay Catholic MP who died at the age of 44 or so, and nobody said anything, and why his body should just shut down at that age? Obviously he could have had a disease that would have killed anybody. But you seem to hear so many stories about this kind of thing, but society won’t address it.”

Volokh Conspiracy: The New York Times reports on this in English; here are also some Russian-language sources, Kommersant (Ukraine), URA-Inform (Ukraine), and Regions.ru (Russia). According to the Times, the proposal would define the prohibited propaganda as “positive public depiction of gays in public,” and the other articles seem consistent with that; if anyone can point me to the Russian-language text of the proposed law, I’d love to verify that.

Christian Concern: The government has lifted Sunday trading laws for the duration of the Olympics in an attempt to boost the economy, the BBC has reported.

Christian Institute: Churchgoers in Woking can continue to park in the town’s off-street car parks for free on Sundays following an unsuccessful challenge by secularists.

Washington Post: An annual test of wills between Iran’s morality police and women who dress in ways that are deemed unacceptable has begun in cities across the Islamic republic.

Michael Brown at Townhall: A British hotel replaces the in-room Gideon Bibles with copies of Fifty Shades of Grey (aka Mommy porn). A Christian organization is banned by the Advertising Standards Authority from announcing that God can heal sickness today. And a recent poll indicates that only 37% of people in England say they have always believed in God, as opposed to 81% of Americans. Christian England, what has become of you?

Legal Project (see the embedded CBN video): . . . the forces of Islamism that are working to silence critics of Islam-related topics —both in the United States and in Europe – and how they’ve set their sights on international restrictions through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation as well. Director Nunberg also highlighted the Obama Administration’s unfortunate decision to work with the OIC to promote United Nations resolutions that would restrict any “defamation” of Islam.

Breitbart carries video of the announcement.

Haaretz: Though it has no legal status, resolution aimed at calming outcry against court’s verdict banning circumcision of a minor; government to draft legislation later this year.

The Province: A Mennonite couple in a small B.C. community has discriminated against a gay couple from Vancouver by refusing them accommodation in a bed and breakfast, a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has ruled. | Eadie and Thomas v. Riverbend Bed and Breakfast (No. 2), 2012 BCHRT 247

Christian Today: The Constituent Assembly committee tasked with drafting Egypt’s new constitution has revealed articles of the document, which declares that “Islam is the religion of the state” informed by Islamic Sharia principles. However, those statements seem to contradict an included provision for Christians and Jews to be governed by their own religion, according to observers.

Religion Clause Blog: Ahram and Digital Journal both report that in Egypt, representatives of the Coptic Orthodox Church as well as representatives of Egypt’s Evangelical Church refused an invitation to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday. A number of Christian politicians also declined to meet with her.

WorldNetDaily: Fifty members of a northern Nigerian church were burned to death in their pastor’s house. The attack by armed gunmen was only the first in a 12-village spree of violence that left over 100 dead in northern Nigeria’s Plateau State, a region that had previously been outside Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram’s operational area and is the largely Muslim Fulani tribesmen’s homeland.

AP on ABC: Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest Monday, claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will.

Religion Clause Blog: Jewish Journal reported yesterday that rabbis from around Europe have held a 3-day meeting in Berlin to plan how to combat the ruling from a court in the city of Cologne last month banning ritual circumcision of young boys.

Religion Clause Blog: As reported by Reuters last month, on June 19 Haiti’s President Michel Joseph Martelly finally published the amended version of the country’s Constitution that that had been approved by Haiti’s Parliament in May 2011.

AP: Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews are protesting in Jerusalem against attempts to draft members of the cloistered community into the Israeli military.

AP: Police in northeastern Nigeria say security forces and gunmen have clashed anew in a city wracked by violence.

Reuters: Saudi Arabia is studying new regulations to criminalise insulting Islam, including in social media, and the law could carry heavy penalties, a Saudi paper said on Sunday.

Catholic Culture: The world’s oldest functioning Christian monastery faces a clouded future, after an appeals court in Turkey ruled that the building sits on land not owned by the monks.

AP: Tunisia’s ruling Islamists emphasized their commitment to a civil, democratic state – as opposed to one under hardline religious rule – as they opened on Thursday their first party congress since taking power.

AP: More than three hours of violence in the hardline Catholic Ardoyne district marked the fourth straight year that the area has descended into street battles following the annual passage of Protestant marchers from the Orange Order brotherhood.

AP: Chile’s president signed an anti-discrimination law Thursday following the killing of a gay man beaten by attackers who carved swastikas into his body.

Christian Institute: Electronic Bibles have been offered to guests at a hotel in Newcastle upon Tyne to replace hard copies of the traditional Gideons Bible.

Chicago Tribune: The head of Libya’s largest Islamist party refused on Wednesday to concede defeat in its first free election in almost half a century, accusing his main liberal rival of “tricking” voters with disingenuous commitments to Islam.

Religion Clause Blog: “Islam is the religion of the state, and Arabic is its official language, and the principles of Islamic Sharia are the main source for legislation. Christians and Jews shall resort to legislation derived from their own religions.”

AP: The government body that controls the Catholic church in China says it is investigating the selection of a bishop who cut his ties to the group as soon as he was ordained, in an embarrassment to Beijing that could deepen its rift with the Vatican.

AP: The Conference of European Rabbis is calling on Germany’s Jewish community to continue circumcising baby boys . . .

Boston Globe: Liberal parties held a lead Wednesday in partial results from Libya’s first parliamentary election, on the same day that the head of the interim government stated his country would not be ruled by Islamists.

Boston Globe (AP): President Hugo Chavez says he’s seeking friendly relations with representatives of the Roman Catholic Church.

Telegraph: Christians will be able to wear crosses to work under changes to the law promised yesterday by David Cameron.

Religion Clause Blog: On Monday, the U.S. State Department again issued a statement protesting Iran’s continued imprisonment of Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani who, it says, still faces the threat of execution for simply following his faith.

AP: A group of Christians trapped in the besieged, bombed-out Syrian city of Homs has been evacuated after a deal between the army and rebels, a priest involved in the evacuation efforts said Wednesday.

RT.com: The Russian Orthodox Church has stepped in to support two British women who are taking their case for wearing religious symbols at work to the European Court of Human Rights.

Catholic Culture: The Vatican announced the excommunication of a Chinese bishop who was ordained without the approval of the Holy See, while Chinese authorities have taken into custody another bishop who proclaimed his loyalty to Rome and renounced the government-backed Patriotic Association.

AP: A newly ordained Chinese bishop has been placed in isolation after announcing he’s quitting his government posts in a challenge to Beijing’s control over the Catholic clergy . . .

AP: The Vatican has urged China to engage in good-faith dialogue with the Roman Catholic church, urging the communist government to avoid damaging gestures . . .

Ramond Ibrahim at the Middle East Forum: Prior to Egypt’s presidential elections, Islamists made clear that the electoral process was an obligatory form of “holy war.” Then, any number of Islamic clerics, including influential ones, declared that it was mandatory for Muslims to cheat during elections—if so doing would help Islamist candidates win; that the elections were a form of jihad, and those who die are “martyrs” who will attain the highest levels of paradise.

AP: A radical Islamist sect claimed responsibility Tuesday for weekend attacks that have killed at least 58 people . . .

The Hill: The cautious approach by the administration reflects the unease that some lawmakers have about the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been linked to violence in the past. A handful of GOP lawmakers immediately called for ending America’s $1.3 billion annual military assistance to Egypt after Morsi won the presidency in June.

Christian Today: At least 58 people, including two lawmakers, were killed after suspected Muslim herdsmen attacked Christian villages near the city of Jos in central Nigeria over the weekend.

Christian Institute: The Church of England’s Parliament, the General Synod, met in York last night (8 July) and decided to overwhelmingly back the right of Christians to ‘manifest their faith in the public square’.

Religion Clause Blog: In Egypt, the country’s new constitution is being drafted by a 100-person Constituent Assembly representing an array of interests.

AP: An Israeli parliamentary committee on Monday denounced a ruling in Germany banning ritual circumcision, saying the decision infringes upon religious freedom . . .

Ruth Institute: Paul Diamond is one of the top religious liberty litigators in the United Kingdom. Listen to this hard-hitting interview I did with him last fall. When I interviewed him on Catholic Radio, I had no idea that the threats he described in the UK would be coming to the U.S. so soon. In both countries, the overall problem is the same. The government is taking it upon itself to create a new moral universe around what it describes as “sexual freedom.

Gatestone Institute: The report, which examines some of the main Islamist groups operating in Spain, shows that the common thread linking all the groups together is their mutual desire to establish an Islamic Caliphate.

Religion Clause Blog: Last weekend, senior Austrian government officials and members of Austria’s Islamic community attended ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary of Austria’s Law on Islam.

Public Discourse: Outside the West, tens of millions of human beings are subject to violent persecution because of their religious beliefs, or those of their tormentors. Scores of millions more are subject to serious restrictions on their religious freedom. In the West itself, including the United States, religious freedom is also under various pressures . . . The resulting monograph, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right, is the Task Force’s considered statement on these matters. It is informed by insights from all these academic disciplines and religious traditions. In Religious Freedom: Why Now? the reader will encounter the following arguments . . .

Daniel Pipes at National Review: The Russian and Chinese actions point to these alliances shaping the foreign policies of outside powers, too. Whereas the European Union and the U.S. government are increasingly sympathetic to Islamism, in part as a way to tame their own Muslim populations, Moscow and Beijing have a history of open conflict with their Muslim populations and therefore adopt policies more hostile to Islamism in the Middle East.