wfn.org | Opposition to Religious Persecution Measure Stepped up

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

8-June-1998 
98153 
 
    Opposition to Religious Persecution Measure Stepped up 
 
    by Ira Rifkin 
        Religion News Service 
 
WASHINGTON-Efforts to derail a proposed bill in Congress that would trigger 
automatic sanctions against nations found to persecute religious minorities 
is accelerating on Capitol Hill and at the White House. 
 
    On April 28, the National Council of Churches (NCC) - which opposes the 
proposed Freedom from Religious Persecution Act - brought a half-dozen 
foreign Christian and Muslim religious leaders to Capitol Hill to outline 
why they believe the bill would do more harm than good. 
 
    "It is very important for us to distinguish between the morality of 
rhetoric and the morality of results," said Amien Rais, who chairs a 
28-million-member Indonesian Muslim group called Muhamadiyah. 
 
    The bill, he said, could subject religious minorities to additional 
persecution because they would be blamed for whatever economic and social 
woes resulted from sanctions. 
 
    A day earlier, President Bill Clinton told members of the National 
Association of Evangelicals gathered at the White House that automatic 
sanctions could encourage presidents to overlook religious persecution 
violations to avoid triggering measures the executive branch considered 
diplomatically unwise. 
 
    The evangelical leaders were urged by the president to withdraw their 
previously announced support for the proposed bill, introduced in the House 
by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. (a Presbyterian), and in the Senate by Sen. Arlen 
Specter, R-Pa. 
 
    In its first legislative test, the bill cleared the House International 
Relations Committee in mid-March.  The full House could consider the 
measure as early as mid-May, said Anne Huiskes, a Wolf legislative aide. 
The Senate has yet to begin its consideration. 
 
    The bill has broad support among evangelicals and other religious 
conservatives, in addition to U.S. catholic bishops and some Jewish groups. 
However, it has been opposed from its inception by the Clinton 
administration and the NCC as well as several of the mainline Protestant 
churches among the Council's 34 Protestant and Orthodox Christian member 
denominations. 
 
    The bill focuses on the most egregious acts of religious persecution - 
such as violent attacks and enslavement - that supporters say are common 
against religious minorities in some Muslim countries as well as former and 
present communist nations.  Supporters say minority Christians are among 
those most often subjected to religious persecution. 
 
    Nations found in violation of the law would be subject to automatic 
sanctions, including a cutoff of all nonhumanitarian American aid and 
American opposition to international loan requests made by the offending 
countries. 
 
    The Clinton administration has long argued such provisions might force 
the White House to deal harshly with some of this nation's major allies and 
trade partners. 
 
    Congressional opponents of the Wolf-Specter bill have introduced a 
substitute measure 
giving the White House wider discretion in responding to a broader range of 
acts of religious persecution.  Presidential options would range from a 
diplomatic protest through sanctions and a break in diplomatic relations. 
 
    The substitute measure has gained the backing of Sen. Jesse Helm, 
R-N.C., the powerful head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 
 
    Although opposed to Wolf-Specter, the NCC has taken no position on the 
substitute measure, the International Religious Freedom Act introduced by 
Senate majority leader Don Nickles, R-Okla. 
 
    However, the Rev. Albert Pennybacker, NCC associate general secretary, 
characterized the Nickles bill as having "a number of elements ... that are 
quite good." 
 
    Huiskes said any final bill emerging from the Congress is likely to 
combine features from both measures. 
 
    At the April 28 Capitol Hill news conference, the foreign religious 
leaders brought here by the NCC said the Wolf-Specter bill was viewed 
overseas as a case of the United States unilaterally seeking to impose its 
political will. 
 
    The Rev. Raid Jarjour, the Beirut-based general secretary of the Middle 
East Council of Churches, said the bill evokes "memories of the Crusades" 
among Middle East Muslims. 
 
    "They feel this bill is a new Crusade in the sense that it's a new 
invasion of American foreign policy and some evangelical groups who want to 
convert Muslims," said Jarjour, a Presbyterian.  "They see the bill as a 
way to create dissension between Christians and Muslims." 

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