SENTINAL WATCH August 11, 2008 Issue

LET RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RING

JANESSA GANS

BEFORE THIS YEAR'S Fourth of July celebrations, I attended a performance by an actor who impersonated Thomas Jefferson. In recounting this Founding Father's life and achievements, he cited Jefferson's strong commitment to religious freedom—a freedom so important to Jefferson that he directed that "Author of ... the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom" be inscribed on his tombstone as one of his three greatest accomplishments.

Jefferson regarded the separation of church and state as key to protecting religious freedom. In 1802 he wrote to the Danbury [Connecticut] Baptist Association: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

I grew up valuing the Jeffersonian model of prohibiting state interference in or promotion of religion. When my work took me to the Middle East, I wasn't fully prepared for the very different model followed there. Since Isalm fuses political and religious governance, law, and social conduct, many Muslims find little justification or rationale for separating religion from the state. In practice, this often leads to conflict over which interpretation, sect, or branch of Islam will hold leadership roles, Iraq being the most notable case. Various Shia and Sunni groups, often sanctioned by religious leaders, have resorted to violence to enforce their own religious beliefs while persecuting those holding differing beliefs.

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