An interview with Robert P. George, new chairman of US
International Freedom Commission.
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| A Coptic Orthodox bishop prays with local residents at burnt and damaged evangelical church in Minya, Egypt, |
Aug. 26. (CNS photo/Louafi Larbi, Reuters)
Robert P.
George is the new chairman of the US Commission on International Religious
Freedom, a panel on which he has served as a commissioner since 2012. Though he
has a personal interest in religious freedom—his father’s family is Syrian
Orthodox, and some of his relatives have fled Syria due to religious
persecution—his outlook is global, overseeing research and reports on
limitations on religion worldwide, involving Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists,
and others.
The longtime
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, George is a
visiting professor at Harvard Law School this year. He is the author ofConscience and Its Enemies (ISI, 2013) among other works. He spoke
with CWR August 26, as the Obama administration weighed options on a military
response to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government against
rebels and civilians.
The
escalation in Syria came a week after tense fighting in Egypt between the
country’s military and supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. During the
conflict, scores of Coptic Christian churches, institutions and businesses were
attacked and destroyed by fire. One church that was razed, the Church of the Virgin Mary in Delga, had survived many upheavals since it
was built in the 4th or 5th century. Now it lies in rubble.
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| Robert P. George |
CWR: What do we know about what’s going on
with the Coptic Christians in Egypt?
George: The situation in Egypt and the equally
horrific situation in Syria illustrate the general plight of Christians in the
Middle East. These are very ancient Christian communities, going back nearly to
the foundations of Christianity, in many cases. Yet, over a number of years now
we’ve seen the erosion of these communities, to the point where one begins to
become concerned that before too long there will be no Christian communities
left in the Middle East. The Christian community in Iraq was devastated as a
result of the Iraq war. Many, many Iraqi Christians fled. In many cases, they
fled to Syria, of all places, and now what do we see? They’re now having
to flee from Syria.
The native
Syrian Christian population, as well as Christian refugees from Iraq and
elsewhere, is now at grave risk. Of course, it’s not just Christians who are
suffering in Syria or in Egypt, but just for the moment I’m talking about
Christians. The native Christian Syrian population, which is an ancient
Church—it’s actually the Church of my father and his ancestors—is now in peril.
My own Syrian relatives have left and are in the United States and will
probably never be able to return to their homes.
The same
thing is now happening in Egypt, of course, with the Coptic Christians, who
have always been at risk and have been subjected to persecutions frequently
over the centuries. They are now being brutally attacked, made scapegoats. The
attacks come not from simply one sector of the general Egyptian society but
from several different sectors. Their churches have been burned, their
businesses have been attacked, a large number have been murdered. Again, a very
ancient Middle Eastern Christian community is under assault. We will begin to
see and are already seeing Coptic refugees fleeing Egypt.
So, it’s a
tragedy. It should be of concern to Christians around the world. This is the
very cradle of Christianity, the Middle East. These are ancient Christian
communities, and it should be of concern to the entire world. Too often,
especially in the Western media, including here in the United States, there is
an ideological tendency to treat Christians as if they can only be persecutors,
and never the persecuted. But if we look at what is happening now to these
ancient Christian communities across the Middle East, as well as what’s
happening to Christians in Africa and some parts in Asia, you see that very,
very often today Christians are the persecuted, and the persecutions are quite
brutal.
CWR: You mentioned your family. Are you
yourself Orthodox?
George: No, I’m Catholic. My mother is Italian
Catholic, but my father’s family is Syrian Orthodox—Antiochian Orthodox. They are people of
deep Christian faith.
CWR: What about the view that these Christian
communities were better off under people like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and
possibly Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and now Bashar al-Assad in Syria?
George: No one should express any sympathy at
all for horrible dictators like Assad and Saddam Hussein. Often they were the
protectors of Christians and other minorities not because they particularly
liked Christians or other minorities but because it was politically expedient
for them to do so. Their coalitions, their bases of support were patched
together and in many cases included some Christians. It is no salute to Mubarak
or certainly to Assad, who is far worse than Mubarak, or Saddam Hussein, who
was probably even worse than Assad—it is no tribute to any of them to say that,
if it’s true that the Christian communities were oppressed as was everyone in
the reign of those dictators, they were to some extent protected, and their
plight has gotten worse, and that’s a tragedy. We should not be longing for the
return of people like Assad and Saddam Hussein. We should be hoping and praying
and working for the establishment in these nations of decent regimes that will
respect the basic human rights of all people, including the Christians.
CWR: What are your thoughts on the proper US
response to the situations in Egypt and Syria?
George: They are different cases, obviously. We
have, I believe, a bit more leverage in Egypt than we have in Syria. Certainly
in Egypt, I think we need to put pressure on the military government to protect
the Coptic Christians, and to make the protection of the Coptic Christians a
high priority. We need to make it clear that where attacks on Christians are
done with impunity, and where the government just looks aside or doesn’t treat
the issue as serious enough to protect the victims, there will be consequences
in our relations with the military rulers in Egypt.
I think we
also need to make it clear to the Muslim Brotherhood and other factions in
Egypt that if they again rise to power in Egypt, we will not forget their
behavior toward Christians and other oppressed minorities during this period.
If they aspire to any kind of decent relationship with the United States, they
must cease and desist, and their leadership needs to play a role in preventing
these attacks by their supporters on the Copts and on others. I think that’s what
we can do right now.
Of course,
the situation in Syria is more complicated. We do not have much leverage,
certainly, with the Assad regime. To speak of “the” rebel force, we’re really
misspeaking because there is no single unified rebel force or anything remotely
like it. There are many, many different factions. Some are as evil and brutal
as the regime itself.
Hindsight is
20/20. I don’t mean to be excessively critical. There was a time, I think, in
these developments when the chances were better for establishing a decent
regime in Syria by backing elements that were in a position to have overthrown
Assad. … But that moment seems to have been missed, and it’s a tragedy that no
one knows quite how to deal with it. I certainly don’t.
Now, that
doesn’t mean we sit here and twiddle our thumbs. We could be applying pressure
where we can. The Saudis are very active in Syria. We have leverage with the
Saudis and we should be using that to protect the Christians and other
persecuted minorities…. We need to be working with the international community
to relieve the plight of Syrian refugees, especially those from the Christian
community who are, like my own relatives, fleeing.
Having said
all that, there is no easy solution. Certainly for those of us who are
Christian, the most important thing we can do is pray for our persecuted
Christian brothers and sisters in Syria. They’re going through something
absolutely horrible right now and they need our prayer and support.
CWR: What was that opportunity we had in
Syria?
George: There has been, as time has worn on, the
movement into Syria of a variety of different forces, all of whom are lumped
together in the minds of many Americans and other western commentators as
“rebel forces.” But those are not unified forces, and in a great many cases
they are deeply hostile to each other. Obviously there are now Iranian-backed
Hezbollah and other Islamist extremists operating in Syria against the Assad
regime. We as westerners and believers in human rights would say “a curse on
both their houses.” But there was a time earlier on when, I think, when there
was a chance that backing, giving some support—I’m not talking about
invading—but giving some support to anti-Assad forces, anti-Baathist forces,
before the Islamist extremists entered the picture in a big way, might have
produced a regime change that would not have resulted in the replacement of
Assad with an equally bad Islamist extremist regime. But even if I’m right that
such an opportunity once existed, it is no longer there. The radical Islamist
forces now are a too big a part of the rebellion, and one of the all-too-likely
possibilities is that the Baathist regime will, in the end, be replaced by an
equally bad regime tied to Iran.
CWR: What do you hope to accomplish as
chairman of the USCIRF?
George: I certainly want to build on the
achievements of my predecessor as chairman, Katrina Lantos Swett, who served
with enormous distinction, and I’m delighted that she remains a member of the
commission and, indeed, is vice chairman of the commission. I’ll continue to
work closely with her. She and I believe that the plight of Christians
throughout the Middle East has got to be given greater priority. That’s one
thing I hope will be a mark of my chairmanship.
We’re also
very concerned about Jewish communities. There are some small Jewish
communities left outside Israel in the Middle East. They’re under even greater
pressure these days than they have been in the past in places like Yemen.
I’m very
concerned about religious persecution in Europe. Of course, it does not involve
the brutality that we find in the Middle East. But I still hate to see liberal
democratic regimes engaging in illiberal practices on the religious freedom
front. We see this in a variety of areas. One, of course, is the all-too
evident revival of anti-Semitism in some European countries.
Some European
countries, even those with traditions of respect for civil liberties, are
imposing restrictions on religiously-oriented clothing, like the Muslim
headscarf on girls in schools, [and] jewelry, such as wearing a Star of David
or a cross on a necklace. This extreme laicism or secularism represents an
effort to drive religion into the purely private sphere and out of the public
square, and that’s incompatible with a robust and proper understanding of religious
freedom as extending not merely to what one does in the mosque or church or
synagogue or temple or in the home at mealtime or bedtime, but extending to
one’s public life. The robust right of religious freedom must include the right
of the believer to enter the public square and to express his faith, including
by symbols, and also to act on his religiously-inspired moral convictions about
justice and the common good, just as Martin Luther King did in our own country,
just as the abolitionists and people of other great reform movements did in our
own country and continue to do, for example, in the pro-life movement.
So I’m
concerned about Europe. It has not been a focus of USCIRF’s concern in the
past, but it is commented on at some length in our 2013 report, and we will be continue to monitor that. There was the recent ruling
in Cologne, Germany, equating religious circumcision in male infants with child
abuse and attempting to ban it. Fortunately, the German government is moving to
undo that court decision, but it’s indicative and reflective of an attitude and
an ideology that needs to be taken seriously and strongly resisted. I want to
applaud the Catholic bishops in Germany for coming out strongly against that
ruling, despite the fact that no specifically Catholic interest was engaged
here. Catholics don’t require circumcision of male children, though they permit
it. This was not the Catholic Church’s fight. The bishops distinguished
themselves by speaking out on behalf of the Jewish community and certain Muslim
communities, for whom circumcision is a religious requirement.
On that same
note, to go back to the Middle East for a moment, I also think we need to
applaud and salute those Muslims who have stood up and spoken and tried to
protect the Coptic Christians and other Christian minorities in the Middle
East. On several occasions, Muslims have protected churches against extremists
and mobs, protected the businesses of Christians, and taken other steps. It’s a
mistake to paint with too broad a brush and to assume that all Muslims in Egypt
or other Middle Eastern countries are persecutors of Christians. There have
been more than a few, to their very great credit, who have not only refused to
participate in the persecution, but have tried their best to stop it.
Moving now to
other nations and regions of the world, we are, of course, deeply concerned
about religious persecution in China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria,
and other states that are on our CPC list. CPC refers to “Countries of Particular Concern,” countries we are
recommending to the State Department for listing so they will be subjected to
sanctions unless the administration takes the affirmative step of granting them
a waiver. And we believe that waivers, if they are granted, should be granted
for short periods of time, for terms, and the administration needs to pressure
these offending states—these are the grossest offenders, the worst
offenders—needs to pressure them and make clear to them that these waivers are
only temporary, and unless reforms are made those waivers will be removed and
sanctions will be imposed.
haymanoteabow@gmail.com
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