Search results for: religious freedom

President Obama lectured, “‘Never again’ is a challenge to defend the fundamental right of free people and free nations to exist in peace and security.” Perhaps “never mind” is more apt.

Terry Ascott’s solution for the Middle East tramples over one of the region’s most sacred cows: Redraw the map.

Part II: Important, If True

The first of a five-part epistolary exchange between the actor Richard Dreyfuss and Providence associate editor Susannah Black exploring such issues as the potential of civics education to combat the appeal of groups like ISIS, the place of religion in public life, and the roots of the ideas of the American founding.

The Marrakesh Declaration is a good—albeit late—start. Political and religious leaders in the Middle East’s Muslim-majority nations have much ground to cover to protect religious minorities. Shiites are targeted in Sunni-majority nations, Sunnis in Shiite-majority nations, and Christians virtually everywhere in the Middle East.

In every year of Mr. Obama’s presidency, without exception, the cause of freedom has been in retreat around the world.

Last month about 300 muftis, theologians, and scholars held a conference in Marrakesh, Morocco to address the problem of violence in Islamic states. The result is the Marrakesh Declaration, a 750-word document calling on Muslim countries to guarantee “full protection for the rights and liberties to all religious groups” and “confront all forms of religious bigotry.” Yet the crisis in modern Islam is that its leaders still steadfastly refuse to confront their violent past.

Debates over the appropriate American response to the Syrian refugee crisis reflect division and uncertainty about a deeper question: What is America’s national purpose?

Just war aims at peace. As Augustine argued, “Every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace.” We do not fight war for its own sake, or for revenge, profit, or prestige. The only conceivable rationale for waging war is to create a world of better, deeper, more lasting peace than the one that led to war in the first place.

Alarmingly, today there are militant Islamists who are using “Strategic jihad” to threaten our fundamental freedoms and rights.