Can religious freedom advocacy in foreign policy alleviate pain and suffering? In 2016, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Baha’i Faith held an important seminar proposing that religious, economic, and political freedoms are correlated and ultimately suggesting that religious freedom improves other facets of a society. So far, it is unclear exactly how advocates would operationalize religious freedom in foreign policy, as the debates focus on its necessity in the first place. However, according to Pew Research Center, 77 per cent of the world’s population suffered from high or very high religious restrictions in 2013. The discussion of religious freedom in foreign policy thus appears to be a pressing matter, yet still faces strong opposition.

The opponents fear that spreading Western ideals to foreign societies resembles imperial motives akin to colonialism’s civilizing mission. An imposition of religious freedom would result in further exercise of Western nations’ power, as they are capable of punishing those who refuse to comply (exemplified by military measures against extremist groups in the Middle East). In addition, they highlight the danger of overemphasizing religion and overlooking the complexity of the conflicts rooted in many other issues.

However, the proponents of religious freedom in foreign policy assure that this cannot resemble imperialism, simply due to the lack of intent to implement religious rights in foreign policies. Additionally, those who speak out for religious freedom are often the oppressed minorities, not the powerful majority. Advocates of religious freedom do not deny other underlying issues at hand. Yet they argue that including religious freedom into foreign policies ensures that religion cannot be utilized as a pretext for persecuting vulnerable peoples. Extremist organizations are usually the biggest oppressors of religious freedom, thus fighting alongside religious minorities should not strengthen such forces.

While both sides of the debate have some valid arguments, I see weaknesses in the two perspectives. As for the opponents, the imperialism of religious freedom in foreign policy seems exaggerated, due to the neglecting of religious freedom advocacy in Western nations such as the United States. Should they wish to colonize through the religious freedom discourse, they would perhaps show stronger promotion of the ideology. In the case of Canada, those who seek the help of the Office of Religious Freedom are not the Catholic majority, as many have feared, but the Jews, Sikhs, and Ahmadiyya Muslims. If minority groups call for religious freedom, perhaps it would be less imperialistic to heed to their concerns.

As for the proponents, it remains unclear how religious freedom could really resolve any problems. Religion is rarely the single motivation for a conflict, thus ensuring religious freedom is unlikely to significantly improve world peace. There exist worldwide issues due to discrimination based on other social classifications, such as ethnicity, gender, and sexuality-just to name a few. Would adding to the list of categories in which people must not discriminate lead to real changes for the better? A proponent could answer that religious freedom promotes democracy while preventing and reconciling conflicts. Such a claim is precisely what the opponents criticize: the hidden agenda of the religious freedom discourse as spreading the Western lifestyle rather than supporting a more appropriate solution for the specific nations.

While I ultimately sympathize with those against religious freedom in foreign policy, I disagree with their main argument regarding imperialistic motives. Instead, the key issue I find is that if religious oppression occurs from multiple complex reasons, the underlying problems will only persist. I wonder if extremist groups mainly evolved out of deep religious conviction or if certain socioeconomic and political environments are fertilizing grounds for such organizations. Can the insistence of religious freedom really suppress systematic oppression? The main problems that prevent individuals from meeting their necessities are poverty, unequal wealth distribution, corruption, and other issues that trigger the oppression of marginalized groups – be it based on religion, ethnicity, class, or other social distinctions. Perhaps the solution to a peaceful future lies not in ensuring that all humans can exercise religious freedom, but by tackling the political and socioeconomic inequalities that open the door for such oppression in the first place.

Even if religious freedom were to be included foreign policy, how could it be practically implemented? Using the United States as an example, we can see how controversial debates about religious freedom arise at the federal, state, and municipal levels. For instance, there is a persisting debate about attire, and whether or not religious symbols should be allowed in the public sphere or banned altogether. Elsewhere, Christians in West Virginia feel persecuted due to the gay rights and contraception movements, displaying the local collisions between different freedoms and rights. Inequalities may persist when some are considered more equal than others: Michael Stark claims that “many Christian Americans, like myself, are quick to champion the freedom of religion. Yet for many, this seems to only apply to the freedom to practice Christianity. Muslims do not seem to be afforded the same equal treatment when they are consistently viewed suspiciously of being violent”. It is difficult to see how Western nations with issues of religious freedom of their own can solve similar problems abroad.

The issue regarding the debate about religious freedom and foreign policy is the overemphasis on the pretext of injustices, rather than the socioeconomic and political roots that those problems mask. Systematic oppression is better tackled when focusing on alleviating poverty, wealth inequality, violence, corruption, and other core factors hindering individuals from meeting their needs. Considering the problems of executing religious freedom on the domestic level, it begs the question: is religious freedom advocacy in foreign policy implementable at all?