The rise of the group calling itself Islamic State and associated extremist movements has wreaked havoc on religious liberties in the Middle East and elsewhere, as weak governments are unwilling or unable to intervene, according to a new State Department report on international religious freedom.
Islamic State has pursued a practice of seeking to “eliminate members of any group it assessed as deviating from ISIL’s own violent and destructive interpretation of Islam,” the report said, using an acronym for the group that is also sometimes referred to as ISIS or Daesh.
The annual assessment, issued Wednesday, covers 2014 and is the first since Islamic State began seizing swaths of land in Iraq and Syria and allying itself with militant groups across the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere.
In presenting the report on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that, unlike in previous years, nonstate actors are now principal persecutors of religious minorities.
“One of the more consequential facts of our era has been the…development of a sort of new phenomenon of nonstateactors who, unlike the last century and the violence that we saw and persecution that we saw that emanated from states, are now the principal persecutors and preventers of religious tolerance and practice,” Mr. Kerry said. “Most prominent, and most harmful, obviously, has been the rise of international terrorist groups such as Daesh, al Qaeda, al-Shabaab, BokoHaram,” he said.
President Barack Obama in August 2014 authorized military strikes near Mount Sinjar in Iraq to help protect members of the Yazidi religious minority who faced possible genocide. Since Islamic State’s rise, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced while others have been killed, kidnappedand abused, the report said, noting the destruction of religious sites in the region.
The U.S. also expressed concern that countries are increasingly citing combating terrorism and extremism as excuses to impose religious restrictions.
“As much as we oppose the actions of terrorists, we do not agree with governments that use those crimes as a pretext for prohibiting religious activities that are in fact nonviolent and legitimate,” Mr. Kerry said.
Globally, anti-Semitism continues to be a major problem, the report said, citing an increase in anti-Semitic incidents, particularly in Western Europe.
As the U.S. is trying to bring about a political solution to Syria’s 4½-year civil war, the report faulted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for promoting a sectarian narrative that has sparked an increase in religiously motivated attacks.
“In many situations, the lack of regime action to try to stop ISIL’s and other groups’ advances and attacks on specific religious groups and communities laid bare Assad’s cynical political calculations in daring to claim the title ‘protector’ of any of Syria’s people,” the report said.
The report also noted Boko Haram’s assault on religious freedom in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger; China’s restrictions on Uighur Muslims; and actions against state-sanctioned Christian churches and increasing persecution of religious minorities in Russia’s occupation of Crimea.
Mr. Kerry said the U.S. is concerned with global detentions of people practicing religious beliefs and pointed to China’s arrest in August of Zhang Kai, a Chinese Christian human rights lawyer, ahead of a meeting with the U.S. ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, David Saperstein. Mr. Zhang’s present whereabouts is unknown, Mr. Kerry said.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-extremist-groups-are-worlds-chief-religious-persecutors-u-s-report-says-1444839931?mod=e2tw