“Religion is at the very essence in the development of human rights, through the understanding that all men are equal before God,” asserted Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi in his opening address to an international seminar on ‘Promoting religious Freedom and Peaceful Coexistence’ in the presence of academics, think-tanks and media at the Italian foreign ministry in Rome Monday.
In remarks preceding a video address by his Jordanian counterpart as well as a series of workshops on myriad topics including the influence of religion on international relations, the legal framework for religious freedom, the role of the media in promoting tolerance and the complex relationship between freedom of religion and freedom of expression, he added that “our common engagement for freedom of religion testifies our belonging to a community of nations committed to open debate, human rights and, ultimately, respect for diversity”.
Touching on the increasing religious diversity which shapes the global political and cultural landscape, Terzi cautioned against the naive Western belief that the tension this can create “would eventually solve itself”. Insisting that this backward attitude only plays into the hands of religious extremists who seek “to abuse the message of religions and to distort it to their violent political purposes”, he warned against politicising religion as he concluded that “for many aspects religion is at the very essence in the development of human right, through the understanding that all men are equal before God”.
Religion can also play a significant role in secular societies, he further contended, as he paraphrased German sociologist and philosopher Jurgen Habermas who maintained that “our modern societies need to develop a new post secular sensitivity and draw on religion as a source of public reasoning to cure the pathologies of modernisation, including the crisis of an individualistic system of relations which prevents the construction of real and strong communities”.
However, if we want to persist in our efforts to achieve widespread religious freedom, it would be “dangerous and shortsighted” to underestimate the threat of religious extremism, he continued, which in the wake of 2011’s political uprisings across the Arab world would constitute “a betrayal of the very spirit that inspired the uprisings themselves”, that of a struggle for democratic transition to build a society comprising religious freedom and peaceful coexistence.
The solution to the hijacking of religion for political purposes should not be “to expel religion from public life”, he insisted as he rounded off his address, but “rather, the battle is between those who seek to impose it as a totalitarian feature, and a part who wishes to harness religion’s message of tolerance to build a freer and modern society” as he committed Italy and the international community’s help in those striving to achieve that goal.
Also addressing the conference on behalf of the student contingent was Giulia Janni who invoked the United Nations General Assembly’s 1948 Universal Declaration on human rights in the aftermath of WWII and the same year as the Jewish State was founded to highlight that “religious belief represents a fundamental and inalienable right of the human being”.
Despite the progress we proclaim to have achieved in the 64 intervening years, however, she insisted that ongoing conflicts across North Africa and the Middle East clearly show that religious-based conflicts “still play a major role in compromising global peace”. Proclaiming education as the only definitive solution to the age-old problem, he maintained that “knowledge is a fundamental prerequisite for the dialogue, since thinking of our own beliefs not as the only possible and right, but as one among many, is absolutely necessary,” calling on academia and the media to play its role in promoting plurality of information and religious tolerance.
Calling on the governments of all 27 EU member states to adopt an obligatory educational programme on the history of religions in their schools, she concluded that through such an initiative “new generations will be more attentive and aware, more open to dialogue, and against any form of discrimination and intolerance. Religions could become a great resource of peace and tolerance, recognising and accepting diversity as individual wealth for all people and contribute to the development of civilisation as a whole. We can one day imagine an international peace, where faith, all faiths, will no longer be used as a lethal weapon”.