May 12, 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 12, 2014 | USCIRF
WASHINGTON, DC – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on May 9 appointed Dr. Daniel I. Mark and re-appointed Dr. Robert P. George to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Dr. Mark will assume the Commission seat being vacated by Elliott Abrams, whose term expires May 14. Speaker Boehner first appointed Dr. George in 2012.
“USCIRF welcomes Dr. Mark to the Commission,” said USCIRF Chairman Dr. Robert P. George. “As a gifted scholar and a dedicated advocate of human rights, he will be a great asset to our Commission as we work to help advance the cherished right of freedom of religion or belief around the world.”
Dr. Daniel I. Mark is an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, where he teaches political theory, philosophy of law, American government, and politics and religion. He also is a faculty associate of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good. In addition, he is a research scholar of the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey and an assistant editor of Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy. He also works with the Tikvah Fund in New York and has taught at the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. Dr. Mark holds a BA, MA, and PhD from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. There, he was affiliated with the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, the Program in Law and Public Affairs, and the Penn-Princeton Bioethics Forum. Before graduate school, he spent four years as a high school teacher.
“My fellow Commissioners and I also want to salute and honor outgoing Commissioner Elliott Abrams for his outstanding service to the Commission, his unwavering support for religious freedom, and his wit and wisdom,” said Chairman George.
“USCIRF also is very pleased with the reappointment of Dr. Robert P. George,” said USCIRF Vice-chairs, Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett and Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. “As our current Chairman, he has provided invaluable guidance and wisdom as the Commission entered its 15th year. His insights have been essential toward helping USCIRF fulfill its mandate of highlighting serious threats to religious liberty throughout the world and making the case that religious freedom is both a human rights imperative and a practical necessity that merits a seat at the table with economic, security, and other key concerns of U.S. foreign policy.”
Dr. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, and also is the Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at the University. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and is a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Dr. George is the author of Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and In Defense of Natural Law, among other books. His articles and review essays have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the Review of Politics, the Review of Metaphysics, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, and Law and Philosophy. He has also written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, First Things magazine, National Review, the Boston Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. Professor George is a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. His other honors include the United States Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement, the Phillip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Liberal Arts of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association, and the Paul Bator Award of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy.
Comprising nine voting members, USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission that monitors the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad and makes policy recommendations to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and House of Representatives.
To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, contact USCIRF at [email protected] or 202-786-0613.
May 9, 2014
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
May 9, 2014 | By Katrina Lantos Swett and M. Zuhdi Jasser
The following op-ed appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on May 8, 2014.
WASHINGTON - While this year marks the 100th anniversary of Nigeria’s nationhood, many Nigerians find themselves more alarmed and sorrowful than celebratory. Since the new year, the terrorist group Boko Haram has killed hundreds in its continuing campaign to destabilize Nigeria, deepen the Muslim/Christian divide, and create a state ruled by strict sharia (Islamic law). The recent mass kidnapping of at least 200 schoolgirls – as well as the gruesome bombing at a busy bus stop in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital – graphically underscores Boko Haram’s continued threat to the nation’s future. Continue reading here.
To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at 202-786-0613 or [email protected].
May 1, 2014
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
May 1, 2014 | By Robert P. George
The following op-ed appeared in The Hill on April 30, 2014.
Iranian pastor Saeed Abedini, a U.S. citizen, has been serving an eight-year prison sentence since January 2012 for “threatening national security” through his involvement in Iran’s house church movement. The “Baha’i Seven,” Iran’s Baha’i leaders, have been jailed since 2008 for heading a religious movement that contradicts the beliefs of Tehran’s theocratic leaders.
Shabbaz Bhatti, a Christian who was Pakistan’s Minister for Minority Affairs and a friend of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), of which I am chairman, was murdered by the Pakistani Taliban in March 2011 for opposing his country’s blasphemy law and Aasia Bibi’s death sentence for blasphemy. Two months earlier, Salman Taseer, the Muslim governor of Punjab province, met the same fate for the same reasons. Ms. Bibi remains jailed while her appealed case drags on.
Gao Zhisheng, one of China’s most respected human rights lawyers, is paying a heavy price for his brave defense of fellow citizens, from Falun Gong practitioners to Christians. After disbarring him, China’s government imprisoned and tortured him, and has concealed his whereabouts for nearly two years.
Eritrean Orthodox Church Patriarch Abune Antonios, the leader of Eritrea’s largest religious community, remains under house arrest. He was illegally deposed in 2006 for protesting government interference in church affairs, refusing to excommunicate 3,000 opponents of the Isais Afweki government, and calling for political prisoners to be released. Since 2007, the government has held him at an undisclosed location, denying him family visits and access to medical care despite his being a severe diabetic.
A week before USCIRF’s first visit to Turkmenistan in August 2007, the government finally released former Chief Mufti Nasrullah ibn Ibadullah, a national Muslim leader. USCIRF had called for his release since he was sentenced three years earlier to a 22-year prison term on trumped-up treason charges for refusing to display the Ruhnama, a book of sayings by the country’s ruler, alongside the Qur’an in the nation’s mosques.
Each of these cases represents a clear violation of the bedrock human right of freedom of religion or belief.
On April 30, USCIRF issued its annual report documenting such violations. Reporting on 33 countries, we recommended that the State Department add eight more nations to its list of egregious abusers which deserve being named “countries of particular concern” (CPCs): Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam. USCIRF recommended the re-designation of eight countries as CPCs: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.
Our report also commemorated the 15th anniversary of our creation and the enactment of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). Examining international religious freedom policy since enactment, we reviewed what IRFA requires, assessed America’s record on implementing its provisions, and proposed ways to strengthen U.S. promotion of religious freedom.
According to the most recent Pew study on the subject, more than three-quarters of the world’s people lives in countries in which governments or societies significantly restrict religious practice.
Why should we care?
Religious freedom is tied inextricably to our country’s founding and development, is affirmed by international agreements like the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and honors the precious right of people to follow their conscience peacefully and without fear.
Equally important, societal well-being tends to suffer when religious freedom is unprotected. Politically, religious freedom abuses are linked with abuses of other human rights. Economically, religious persecution can marginalize the persecuted, causing their talents to go unrealized and robbing affected countries of added productivity and abundance. Civically, whenever religious liberty is violated, nations surrender the benefit religious beliefs may yield through the molding of character which enables the responsible exercise of citizenship. Socially, wherever freedom of religion is abused, peace and security may be threatened, affecting these societies and in some cases the security of the United States and the world. Religious freedom can be a powerful and effective means of countering violent religious extremism.
With the release of our 2014 USCIRF report and the IRFA commemoration, we’re reminded that support for religious freedom is both a humanitarian imperative and a practical necessity. To betray it is to betray human nature and well-being; to affirm it is to affirm our humanity and its thriving. Religious freedom merits our continued defense and a prominent seat at the foreign policy table.
George is the chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at 202-786-0613 or [email protected].