Religious Freedom and Peacemaking

Knox Thames is a senior fellow at Pepperdine University and a senior visiting expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The following post comprises his remarks during a panel on “Understanding Religious Freedom: Why Does It Matter?” at the ICLRS 31st Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 7 October 2024. Portions of his remarks were drawn from his book Ending Persecution: Charting the Global Path to Religious Freedom (Notre Dame Press 2024).

Introduction

There can be no durable peace without religious freedom. There may be the cold peace of a cessation of hostilities. However, lasting peace will not come until people can live together, recognizing the rights of their neighbors to pursue truth as their conscience leads without fear of discrimination or violence.

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The Zoroastrian Community Post-Religious Persecution

Malcolm M. Deboo has been president of the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe since 2009. This post is based on his remarks at the AMAR International Charitable Foundation’s Windsor Dialogue Conference held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, England, 24 June 2024. It was published as part of the feature “Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Yazidi Genocide.”

In the West, members of my community are called Zoroastrians, based on the ancient Greek name for the Prophet Zoroaster. In Iran, however, where the faith was established, we are called Zarathushtis, after the Prophet Zarathushtra. In India, we are known as the Parsis, meaning “those who came from Persia”; that name was given by the Hindus to my religious ancestors who left Iran more than a millennium ago, sailed down the Strait of Hormuz via the Persian Gulf, and landed on the west coast of India, in South Gujarat, where they were allowed to stay as refugees. Although India is home to other communities from Iran, including Shiites, the name “Parsi” was reserved for my people. In many ways, they were some of the world’s first “boat people.”

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Institutions as Agents of Persecution and Inclusion of Minority Faiths

Brett G. Scharffs is Rex E. Lee chair and professor of law at J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, and is director of the Law School’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies. The following post is based on his remarks at the AMAR Windsor Dialogue conference held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, England, 24–25 June 2024. It was published as part of the Talk About blog feature “Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Yazidi Genocide.”

My engagement with the AMAR International Charitable Foundation began as a participant in the 2018 Windsor Dialogue conference held in Baghdad, where I and others discussed the experience of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their journey “from persecution to inclusion.”[1] The hope was that the Latter-day Saints’ journey might have salience, relevance, and resonance with the Yazidi community. I later discussed the Latter-day Saints’ journey at a 2022 Notre Dame University Symposium, “Re-Thinking the Law to Protect Religious Minorities,” and published a related essay in Notre Dame Law Review Reflection.

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