The Need to Protect Religion and Speech – Abroad and At Home

​As Republicans and Democrats square off for the final weeks of this midterm election, we should take a moment to recognize that bipartisan cooperation can still work in favor of good policies, including protections of free speech and the free exercise of religion.
 
President Biden’s recent signature of a bill to extent the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan commission that monitors and reports on the treatment of religious groups around the world, demonstrates our country’s continued commitment to freedom of religion. The USCIRF has no lack of persecuted groups to track – Yazidis, Baha’is, and Christians in the Middle East, Jehovah’s witnesses in Russia, Rohingya in Burma, and Christians in Nigeria.
 
Congratulations for pushing the reauthorization of this body goes to a bipartisan group of supporters – Sens. James Lankford, Marco Rubio, Bob Menendez, Jim Risch, Dick Durbin, and Chris Coons.
 
It is not lost on us, however, that while funding for international tracking of religious persecution was being discussed over the summer in the U.S. Senate, writer Salman Rushdie almost died from a vicious attack in Chautauqua, New York. We are reminded that attacks on belief can strike here, too, as well.