The Washington Times: Religious persecution pandemic needs cure, too

The Washington Times published an analysis on religious persecution in the midst of coronavirus.  

The Washington Times published an analysis on religious persecution in the midst of coronavirus.  

The analysis says, “Sadly, this pandemic of religious intolerance and persecution is growing — spreading faster and further every year. More than 8 out of every 10 people live in a place where governments put severe restrictions on freedom of religion and belief. In the last decade, social hostility against religious communities has almost doubled globally. “

“Since 2011, the Nigerian Islamic terror group, Boko Haram, has killed more than 37,000 people and displaced 2.5 million more. Christian villages are attacked and churches bombed regularly — sowing fear among weekly worshippers as they gather and move from village to village,” adds the analysis. 

 

“Recently, sectarian violence in India saw neighbors turn on neighbors. In New Delhi, riots killed dozens of Indian-born Muslims and forced hundreds to flee with all of their possessions. One Muslim victim said, “We will never come back here to live among Hindus … The divide between Hindus and Muslims is unbridgeable now. But this bloodshed, fatalism and distress does not have to be. Religious persecution and violence should rightly be treated like a public health campaign. The fastest way to end it is to prevent it in the first place.

The analysis goes on to mention, “Too much of the world’s response to these crises — like the expulsion of the Rohingya in Burma, Uighurs in China or Christians and Yezidis in Iraq — is to engage in collective hand-wringing or to deploy military force or humanitarian assistance. It is like placing Band-Aids over bullet wounds — a temporary and utterly ineffective fix to a much deeper problem. Instead, we should adopt a response like the one for a public health crisis such as we face today, wielding prevention and education instead of dollars and bombs. Educating for religious liberty and against extremism can and does work to stem the virus of hate. We have proof.”

Concluding, “The curriculum we developed and implemented yielded astounding results. After only a few short lessons, more than 75 percent of students surveyed who initially held discriminatory views toward others became willing to defend their rights. Over half of students who embraced violence and extremism renounced their hateful views.”