Religious discrimination

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section deals primarily with the United States and Canada and does not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Freedom of religion

Religious discrimination · Religious persecution

Status by country

Afghanistan · Algeria · Canada
People's Republic of China · Colombia · France
Georgia · Germany · India · Iran · Italy
Malaysia · Mauritania · Pakistan · Philippines
Saudi Arabia · Sri Lanka · Sudan
United Kingdom · United States

Religion Portal v • d • e

Religious discrimination is valuing or treating a person or group differently because of what they do or do not believe. While some authorities nowadays tend to stress that religion is something personal, others still practice religious discrimination. Many countries have one formal state religion. Practitioners of faiths other than the formal state religion sometimes face discriminatory rules and practices. The US state department yearly publishes an International Religious Freedom report. It includes individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom and incidents of religious discrimination worldwide.

1 Examples
2 References
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Examples

Charges of religious discrimination have been applied to governmental, social, and educational policies.

The Eagle Feather Law, which governs the possession and religious use of eagle feathers, was officially written to protect then dwindling eagle populations while still protecting traditional Native American spiritual and religious customs, of which the use of eagles are central. The Eagle Feather Law later met charges of promoting racial and religious discrimination due to the law’s provision authorizing the possession of eagle feathers to members of only one ethnic group, Native Americans, and forbidding Native Americans from including non-Native Americans in indigenous customs involving eagle feathers—a common modern practice dating back to the early 1500s.

Charges of religious and racial discrimination have also been found in the education system. In a recent example, the dormitory policies at Boston University and The University of South Dakota were charged with racial and religious discrimination when they forbade a university dormitory resident from smudging while praying. The policy at The University of South Dakota was later changed to permit students to pray while living in the university dorms.

Religious organizations such as the Seventh-day Adventist Church make it clear in their university catalog that they have the right to discriminate on the basis of religion. They discriminate against non-Adventists in hiring practices, disciplinary action, and promotions. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has made many anti-Catholic statements stating that the Bible identifies the Pope as the Anti-Christ. Today, the church has softened these statements, explaining that they interpret the biblical passages as referring to the papal institution and not to a specific person. Recently, they have also taken measures against church members who have publicly attacked the pope, especially those who claim that it is in the name of the church.

Under pressure from the Roman Catholic church, the government of Quebec withheld the vote from women until the mid 1940s.

During 1995-1998 Newfoundland had only Christian schools (four of them, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist, and inter-denominational (Anglican, Salvation Army and United Church)). The right to organize publicly supported religious schools was only given to certain Christian denominations, thus tax money used to support a selected group of Christian denominations. The denominational schools could also refuse admission of a student or the hiring of a qualified teacher on purely religious grounds. Quebec has used two school systems, one Protestant and the other Roman Catholic, but it seems this system will be replaced with two secular school systems: one French and the other English.^[1]

In Greece since the independence from the Muslim Ottomans rule in the 1800s, the Greek Orthodox church has been given privileged status and only the Greek Orthodox church, Roman Catholic, some Protestant churches, Judaism and Islam are recognized religions. The Muslim minority alleges that Greece persistently and systematically discriminates against Muslims.^[2]^[3]

According to a Human Rights Practices report by the U.S. State Department on Mexico note that "some local officials infringe on religious freedom, especially in the south". There is conflict between Catholic/Mayan syncretists and Protestant evangelicals in the Chiapas region. ^[4]^[5]^[6]

In some U.S. jurisdictions legal restrictions exist which require a religious test as a qualification for holding public office, for instance in Texas an official may be "excluded from holding office" if he/she does not "acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being." (i.e. God) ^[7] thus atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, most Satanists, some Unitarian Universalists and New Age followers, who do not believe in a supreme being would be excluded from public office.

In 2004, a case involving five Ohio prison inmates (two followers of Asatru, a minister of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, a Wiccan witch and a Satanist) protesting denial of access to ceremonial items and opportunities for group worship was brought before the Supreme Court.^[8] The Boston Globe reports on the 2005 decision of Cutter v. Wilkinson^[9] in favour of the claimants as a notable case. Among the denied objects was instructions for runic writing requested by an Asatruer.^[10] Inmates of the "Intensive Management Unit" at Washington State Penitentiary who are adherents of Asatru in 2001 were deprived of their Thor's Hammer medallions.^[11] In 2007, a federal judge confirmed that Asatru adherents in US prisons have the right to possess a Thor’s Hammer pendant. An inmate sued the Virginia Department of Corrections after he was denied it while members of other religions were allowed their medallions.^[12]

Religious discrimination has also been documented as a practice in area of employment. The follwoing law suit by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Merrill Lynch company alleging discrimination against an Iranian-Muslim employee in US is an example.