Stopping violence should not mean repressing belief
issued by the commission, an advisory body appointed by Congress and the White House to monitor liberty of conscience, is not on violent extremism as such. Rather it is concerned with the way that sloppy charges of “extremism” are used ever more often by authoritarian regimes to clamp down hard on almost any religious group which, for some reason, they don’t like. China, Russia and Tajikistan are mentioned as examples.
For a purist advocate of freedom of conscience, even those guidelines might sound as though they concede too much to the authoritarians. But it is clear enough what the USCIRF is arguing against. Among the most egregious misuses of the e-word is China’s policy vis-à-vis the Uighur Muslims in the country’s north-west.
were arrested in the Siberian city of Surgut and subjected to torture, which included beating, suffocation and electric shocks. This week a follower in Oryol was convicted of “participating in an extremist group” and fined the equivalent of $5,000; prosecutors wanted a three-year jail term. A Danish follower of the sect in the same city has been jailed for six years. For all the eccentricity of their beliefs, nobody has ever seriously accused the Jehovah’s Witnesses of preparing to use force.
In Western democracies, as well as in manifestly authoritarian places, there is a temptation to blur the distinction between idiosyncratic belief and the sort of “extremism” that poses a real threat to public safety. In France and Germany, for example, it is not actually illegal to be a Salafi, but the authorities do assume that it is a step on a road that could lead in a violent direction. The police keep a careful eye on individuals of that persuasion, to the dismay of more peaceful types.
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