Under the guise of noble embrace of religion, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs is lobbying President Obama to terminate traditional American foreign policy of freedom of religion.
UPDATE 2/25/20: Bush created muslim terrorists; Obama's Cairo speech is improvement
-- From "'God gap' impedes U.S. foreign policy, task force says" by David Waters, Washington Post Staff Writer 2/24/10
American foreign policy is handicapped by a narrow, ill-informed and "uncompromising Western secularism" that feeds religious extremism, threatens traditional cultures and fails to encourage religious groups that promote peace and human rights, according to a two-year study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
The council's 32-member task force, which included former government officials and scholars representing all major faiths, delivered its report to the White House on Tuesday. The report warns of a serious "capabilities gap" and recommends that President Obama make religion "an integral part of our foreign policy."
The Chicago Council's task force was led by R. Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame and Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. "Religion," the task force says, "is pivotal to the fate" of such nations as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and Yemen, all vital to U.S. national and global security.
"Despite a world abuzz with religious fervor," the task force says, "the U.S. government has been slow to respond effectively to situations where religion plays a global role." Those include the growing influence of Pentecostalism in Latin America, evangelical Christianity in Africa and religious minorities in the Far East.
. . . Obama appointed a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and created a new Muslim outreach position in the State Department. In the past year, he said, embassies in Muslim-majority countries have held hundreds of meetings with a broad range of people not involved in government.
. . . Cizik said some parts of the world -- the Middle East, China, Russia and India, for example -- are particularly sensitive to the U.S. government's emphasis on religious freedom and see it as a form of imperialism.
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From "Reach out to all religions, but more carefully with Islam" by Cal Thomas, Syndicated political columnist
One of the truisms I learned in college was that nations have interests. So do religions. Sometimes those interests are mutually exclusive. In most cases, religious interests focus on a "kingdom not of this world," to invoke a biblical analogy. But one -- Islam -- has an interest here on earth and large numbers of adherents to that faith believe not only that they have the only truth -- a characteristic found in most religions -- but that they have been ordered by Allah to impose it by force on everyone else. This imposition also includes the taking of land that can spread the Islamic kingdom on earth. This is not bigotry. This is fact as stated in the sermons of their imams and the media in many Islamic countries.
Any diplomatic "outreach" must understand this truth. It must also include at least some common principles in order for that outreach to produce objectives in the best interests of the nations involved, most especially the United States. The stated objective of the radical Islamists is to destroy America and impose Sharia law. It is hard to find common ground with such belief. Do we agree to less destruction if they will leave us alone? What more is there to understand about "you are infidels and deserving of death"? There doesn't appear to be any diplomatic wiggle-room there.
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Related article: Obama Inaction re: Christian Persecution Worldwide
