{"id":18019,"date":"2012-06-07T00:30:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T03:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=18019"},"modified":"2012-06-03T22:38:46","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T01:38:46","slug":"defending-freedom-around-the-world-except-religious-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/07\/defending-freedom-around-the-world-except-religious-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Defending Freedom Around the World, except Religious Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phil Lawler at\u00a0Catholic Culture raises an interesting observation<\/a> about the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the culture of freedom in our strongest “ally” in the region, Pakistan:<\/p>\n

The US is committed to a foreign policy that defends human rights. Yet in the countries where our troops have been fighting during the past decade, one fundamental human right\u2014the right to religious freedom\u2014has been diminished rather than enhanced, particularly for Christians.<\/p>\n

In Iraq the Christian minority is in flight, hounded and intimidated by Islamic extremists. In Pakistan\u2014a nation that was supposedly our ally\u2014the Christian minority is brutally oppressed. In Afghanistan the government that we are defending prohibits our troops from importing religious literature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The belief that the Afghan government restricts troops’ literature is inaccurate.\u00a0 The same restrictions exist on such literature in Afghanistan as they did in Iraq.\u00a0 While import of certain material is restricted in some situations, ultimately no US troop is denied the material he requires for his spiritual support.<\/p>\n

Still, the remaining bits of Lawler’s observation are interesting.\u00a0 It is often said that America and its military “defend freedom” around the world.\u00a0 Yet, in Iraq and especially Afghanistan, where people can still be executed for leaving Islam<\/a>, religious freedom does not seem to be an area of emphasis (though gender issues have been<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In fact, US representatives in Afghanistan have gone out of their way to state the American support of Islam in Afghanistan<\/a> — but not religious freedom <\/em>in Afghanistan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Religious liberty is a fundamental human freedom that the US often vaunts, yet the political sensitivity of supporting freedom — as opposed to the regionally preferred religion — seems to have outweighed the desire to protect that liberty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phil Lawler at\u00a0Catholic Culture raises an interesting observation about the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the culture of freedom in our strongest “ally” in the region, Pakistan: The US is committed to a foreign policy that defends human rights. Yet in the countries where our troops have been fighting during the past decade, one fundamental human right\u2014the right to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[58,96,52,44,2,672,3315,10,171],"class_list":["post-18019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-afghanistan","tag-christian","tag-iraq","tag-islam","tag-military","tag-pakistan","tag-phil-lawler","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}