Religion News Service asked scholars, faith leaders, activists and other experts to reflect on some of the issues they’ve seen on the religious landscape and what they anticipate for 2021.
If India can speak about the danger to freedom of religion in Pakistan, why can’t other nations raise questions about the treatment of minorities, especially Muslims, in India?
Chinese authorities are coercing hundreds of thousands of rural workers to carry out the gruelling labour of handpicking cotton in the heavily Uighur areas of southern Xinjiang province, subjecting them to harsh recruiting, supervision, surveillance and indoctrination.
Laws are meant to protect people from persecution. But laws based on love jihad conspiracies may end up legally persecuting many interfaith couples. They will be prosecuted simply because they fell in love.
“One of the oldest churches, if not the oldest church in the world – the Christian one – is perilously close to extinction in Iraq,” he (Archbishop Warda) said with a catch in his voice, “and those of us who remain must be ready to face martyrdom.”
THE right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) should not be seen as separate from other human rights, or allowed to infringe on them, campaigners have said.
