19 VOLUME 5 |ISSUE 3 |2014
“morning after” pill and marriage commissioners
in British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland
and Saskatchewan must now perform same-sex
marriages or resign.
In addition, Canadian courts of law used laws against
homophobia in order to punish preachers—Catholic,
Protestant and Islamic—who were denouncing homosexual
practices as sins, a position everybody should be free to
disagree with but whose public expression should be
protected by free speech.
I had the similar experience at the OSCE when I was
confronted with British cases of Protestant street preachers
facing criminal prosecution for their graphic descriptions
of how homosexuals will burn in hell. As a Roman Catholic,
I have no special sympathy for the style of these preachers,
the more so since some of them informed their audiences
that Catholics will also burn in hell. At the same time, who
will burn in hell has always been a favorite topic of religious
controversy whose discussion should be protected by
religious freedom and not decided by secular courts.
By directing the attention to North America and Western
Europe in the Observatory’s first public event, we wanted to
call attention to the fact that threats to religious liberty do
not exist only in Asia and Africa, but also surface daily in what
is commonly called the West. Of course, it would be absurd
to equate the bloody persecution of Christians and other
religious minorities in some areas of Africa and Asia with the
administrative discrimination in the West. However, there are
risks associated with what the well-known American Jewish
jurist of South African origin, Joseph Weiler, called the West’s
“Christophobia.”
Christians are the most persecuted and discriminated
religious minority in the world. According to statistics
released yearly by the US-based International Bulletin of
Missionary Research, 75% of those killed in the world because
of their religious faith are Christians. Of course, other
communities are threatened as well, both in Europe and on
other continents. Laws limiting free speech in cases of so-
called homophobia affect Muslims as well as Christians. In
July 2012, the Observatory issued a press release denouncing
attempts by German courts to forbid circumcision of
minors, with decisions affecting both Muslims and Jews. The
German Parliament later prevented this judicial campaign
to go further through a law, but—as the German Die Zeit
editorialized on July 20, 2012—it was
not about the foreskin, nor about any special
exotic provisions in Islam and Judaism—it’s about
something that goes much further, and that must
concern the entire society: it’s about religion as a
whole […]. What a society that tends to be tone-
deaf towards religion tends to forget—or the
point that it often simply misses—is the depth of
the injury that comes from meddling in religious
freedoms.
The Observatory also cooperated with the National
Permanent Conference on Religion, Culture, and Integration
instituted by the Ministry of International Cooperation and
Integration, of which I am also a member, to investigate
incidents of Islamophobia and the role of prejudice in the
denial of permits to build new mosques in Italy. Although
this is a complicated problem, and Muslim communities may
perceive as discrimination what is the simple enforcement
of general provisions of the admittedly intricate Italian law
on zoning regulations or building permits, there is little
doubt that certain political forces do try to manipulate these
laws and exploit fears of fundamentalist Islam for electoral
reasons, thus feeding Islamophobic prejudice.
This conference focuses on new religious movements
(NRMs), and I am personally a scholar specialized in this
field. Reflecting on my experience first at OSCE in 2011,
and then at the Observatory in 2012 and 2013, what
surprises me, however, is that very few incidents submitted
to these institutions refer to NRMs. In 2011, the three OSCE
representatives for combating intolerance visited France.
Among the official meetings there, I organized one in the
offices of Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte
contre les dérives sectaires—i.e., “Interministerial Mission for
Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances,” or MIVILUDES
but the only complaint OSCE had received referred to
problems encountered by a branch of the Plymouth Brethren
about their home-schooling system, a problem we were
able to address with MIVILUDES in a very cooperative and
sympathetic way.
So far, the Observatory has not received complaints about
violations of the religious liberty of the NRMs. We are of
course aware of criticism against some police and other
activities in Italy, but the Observatory’s mission is about
international rather than Italian issues. Other governmental
institutions are monitoring religious liberty within the Italian
territory. Internationally, most of the truly serious and bloody
incidents affect Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Very few cases
of murder of believers and destruction of places of worship
concern the NRMs, except perhaps in China with the cases
involving Falun Gong, although there are of course several
instances of administrative discrimination.
The Observatory addressed these problems indirectly, by
presenting certain positive features of the Italian model—
although we are aware, of course, that Italy has also its shares
of problems. We celebrated with a special event the fact
that in 2012 Intese between the Italian government and
respectively the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(i.e., the Mormon Church), the Italian Hindu Union, and the
Italian Buddhist Union entered into force. Italy has a system
of concordats called Intese that regulate the State’s relations
with a number of religious bodies. Intese provide inter
alia for spiritual assistance in the military forces, hospitals,
public schools, and jails, and legal recognition of marriages
performed by a priest or minister. An important feature is
the possible entrance of the religious bodies with an Intesa,
which so elect (they can, in fact, refuse this benefit, as the
“morning after” pill and marriage commissioners
in British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland
and Saskatchewan must now perform same-sex
marriages or resign.
In addition, Canadian courts of law used laws against
homophobia in order to punish preachers—Catholic,
Protestant and Islamic—who were denouncing homosexual
practices as sins, a position everybody should be free to
disagree with but whose public expression should be
protected by free speech.
I had the similar experience at the OSCE when I was
confronted with British cases of Protestant street preachers
facing criminal prosecution for their graphic descriptions
of how homosexuals will burn in hell. As a Roman Catholic,
I have no special sympathy for the style of these preachers,
the more so since some of them informed their audiences
that Catholics will also burn in hell. At the same time, who
will burn in hell has always been a favorite topic of religious
controversy whose discussion should be protected by
religious freedom and not decided by secular courts.
By directing the attention to North America and Western
Europe in the Observatory’s first public event, we wanted to
call attention to the fact that threats to religious liberty do
not exist only in Asia and Africa, but also surface daily in what
is commonly called the West. Of course, it would be absurd
to equate the bloody persecution of Christians and other
religious minorities in some areas of Africa and Asia with the
administrative discrimination in the West. However, there are
risks associated with what the well-known American Jewish
jurist of South African origin, Joseph Weiler, called the West’s
“Christophobia.”
Christians are the most persecuted and discriminated
religious minority in the world. According to statistics
released yearly by the US-based International Bulletin of
Missionary Research, 75% of those killed in the world because
of their religious faith are Christians. Of course, other
communities are threatened as well, both in Europe and on
other continents. Laws limiting free speech in cases of so-
called homophobia affect Muslims as well as Christians. In
July 2012, the Observatory issued a press release denouncing
attempts by German courts to forbid circumcision of
minors, with decisions affecting both Muslims and Jews. The
German Parliament later prevented this judicial campaign
to go further through a law, but—as the German Die Zeit
editorialized on July 20, 2012—it was
not about the foreskin, nor about any special
exotic provisions in Islam and Judaism—it’s about
something that goes much further, and that must
concern the entire society: it’s about religion as a
whole […]. What a society that tends to be tone-
deaf towards religion tends to forget—or the
point that it often simply misses—is the depth of
the injury that comes from meddling in religious
freedoms.
The Observatory also cooperated with the National
Permanent Conference on Religion, Culture, and Integration
instituted by the Ministry of International Cooperation and
Integration, of which I am also a member, to investigate
incidents of Islamophobia and the role of prejudice in the
denial of permits to build new mosques in Italy. Although
this is a complicated problem, and Muslim communities may
perceive as discrimination what is the simple enforcement
of general provisions of the admittedly intricate Italian law
on zoning regulations or building permits, there is little
doubt that certain political forces do try to manipulate these
laws and exploit fears of fundamentalist Islam for electoral
reasons, thus feeding Islamophobic prejudice.
This conference focuses on new religious movements
(NRMs), and I am personally a scholar specialized in this
field. Reflecting on my experience first at OSCE in 2011,
and then at the Observatory in 2012 and 2013, what
surprises me, however, is that very few incidents submitted
to these institutions refer to NRMs. In 2011, the three OSCE
representatives for combating intolerance visited France.
Among the official meetings there, I organized one in the
offices of Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte
contre les dérives sectaires—i.e., “Interministerial Mission for
Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances,” or MIVILUDES
but the only complaint OSCE had received referred to
problems encountered by a branch of the Plymouth Brethren
about their home-schooling system, a problem we were
able to address with MIVILUDES in a very cooperative and
sympathetic way.
So far, the Observatory has not received complaints about
violations of the religious liberty of the NRMs. We are of
course aware of criticism against some police and other
activities in Italy, but the Observatory’s mission is about
international rather than Italian issues. Other governmental
institutions are monitoring religious liberty within the Italian
territory. Internationally, most of the truly serious and bloody
incidents affect Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Very few cases
of murder of believers and destruction of places of worship
concern the NRMs, except perhaps in China with the cases
involving Falun Gong, although there are of course several
instances of administrative discrimination.
The Observatory addressed these problems indirectly, by
presenting certain positive features of the Italian model—
although we are aware, of course, that Italy has also its shares
of problems. We celebrated with a special event the fact
that in 2012 Intese between the Italian government and
respectively the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(i.e., the Mormon Church), the Italian Hindu Union, and the
Italian Buddhist Union entered into force. Italy has a system
of concordats called Intese that regulate the State’s relations
with a number of religious bodies. Intese provide inter
alia for spiritual assistance in the military forces, hospitals,
public schools, and jails, and legal recognition of marriages
performed by a priest or minister. An important feature is
the possible entrance of the religious bodies with an Intesa,
which so elect (they can, in fact, refuse this benefit, as the
