Smothering Religious Freedom: The Worldwide Assault of Tyranny

By Alan Dowd - Posted at byFaith Online:

A year before America entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt shared his vision of “a world founded upon four essential human freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom from fear, freedom from want, and “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.” FDR asserted these Four Freedoms in the context of a speech about “the democratic way of life … being directly assailed in every part of the world” by a “new order of tyranny.”

Today, it seems the civilized world is under assault from a disorder of tyranny and terror. The enemies of religious freedom abound. But as a recent State Department report reveals, some regimes are set apart when it comes to government repression of religious freedom: North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Russia, and Bahrain. In addition, a Pew study of government restrictions on religious freedom consigns Egypt, Afghanistan, and Syria to the worst-of-the-worst category. Here’s just a tiny sampling of how these regimes smother religious freedom: ...

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