There is a good chance you have never heard of the “International Religious Freedom Act of 1998“. This was a law passed when Bill Clinton was President.
The purpose of this law is to give the U.S. Department of State tools to use against countries that deny people their fundamental human right of religious freedom.
Freedom of religious belief and practice is a universal human right and fundamental freedom articulated in numerous international instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Helsinki Accords, the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, the United Nations Charter, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
The organization created by the law (see the link above) is given the task of looking at each country and evaluating how much they interfere with religious freedom, and based on that to make policy recommendations to the President and Secretary of State on how to push other countries into improving their religious tolerance.
One of the earliest polls was asking why George W Bush’s Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice had issued a waiver to Saudi Arabia to exempt it from trade sanctions suggested to achieve the goals of this law.
The list of “Countries of Particular Concern” – the worst of the worse
Communist: China, Vietnam, North Korea
Islamic: Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria (partly), Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
Eritrea is on the list for preventing Protestant religions
Burma (Myanmar) hates all religions
Reciprocity might be a very useful hammer here on the Ground Zero Mosque issue.
In Saudi Arabia a person even in possession of a Bible is subject to severe “discipline.” And yet, the sundry bye-blows of that theocracy puff up their pigeon breasts, at home and abroad, and crow in high dudgeon about American intolerance because some of us oppose the Gloating Mosque proposed for Ground Zero in New York City. These pompous little vectors of mental disorders receive aid and comfort from the usual anal, unwashed disloyal useful idiots on the home front, of course. Well, I’m different. I don’t oppose the Gloat Mosque in New York. All I want is for it to be built after the Mormons build a temple in Mecca, the Jews build a synagogue in Medina, the Catholics a cathedral two blocks from the Kaaba and Jehovah’s Witnesses are permitted to knock on Arabic doors throughout the nation to hand out Arabic language”Watchtowers.” The stench of that intolerant politico-religion offends my nostrils to the point that I’m pretty damned well sick and tired of it … and their enablers.