Athée Canadien
Conservatives to defend religious freedom abroad
By Ian
While full analysis of each party’s platform is still to come from myself and Zak after they’re released this weekend, I think it’s worth noting something of interest here in the Conservative Party platform that was just released today.
Found just after plans to build a slew of memorials for everything from the War of 1812 to victims of the Holocaust and Communism is this (on page 40):
DEFENDING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Around the world vulnerable religious minorities are subject to persecution, violence, and repression.Canada has a proud tradition of defending fundamental human rights, such as freedom of religion and freedom of conscience; and our Government recognizes that respect for religious pluralism is inextricably linked to democratic development.
But we can and should do more to respond to the plight of those who suffer merely because of their faith. We will:
- create a special Office of Religious Freedom in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to monitor religious freedom around the world, to promote religious freedom as a key objective of Canadian foreign policy, and to advance policies and programs that support religious freedom;
- continue to ensure that Canada offers its protection to vulnerable religious minorities through our generous refugee resettlement programs; and
- ensure that the Canadian International Development Agency works with groups supporting such vulnerable minorities.
[emphasis theirs]
The Office is budgeted for $5 million per year.
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about 1 year ago
I wonder if that includes freedom *from* religion?
about 1 year ago
Yeah, but does this conservative government uphold freedom FROM religion?
about 1 year ago
Given the wording of the question about religion on the in-lieu-of-census survey, I’d say not. Per Harper’s Republi-ooops-Conservatives, atheism doesn’t rate.
about 1 year ago
The irony is that, now and always, the strongest oponents of religious freedom are–surely this is not a surprise–religious people. They want freedom for themselves, of course, but none for those other “false churches”. Nowadays, opposition to religious freedom, happily, in North America and Western Europe is confined by (secular) law to criticism–although religious people hate that, too, when it is directed at them. In the past, torture and mass murder, in supressing heresies, burning witches, religious wars, and church-incited popular reaction to non-conformists, was the rule.
Advocacy of religious freedom has the problem of being opposed in both theory and practice by, guess who, religious people. Practices and principles of religious freedom, as understood by religious people, and observed to occur by the rest of us are:
1. freedom from criticism (It is demanded that the rest of us “respect” their religion, even where there is nothing worth respecting), and
2. freedom to criticise (everyone else), and
3. freedom to impose (their religion on everyone else, whether they want it or not; they call it “evangelism”), and
4. freedom to insist that the state enforce your religious convictions on everyone else (such as, for example at the moment, prohibiting same-sex marriage, although, for all that, religious leaders here and everywhere lined up against decriminalization, protection against discrimination, even simple reference in the media, when those were up for grabs).