ONLINE JANUARY 24, 2013
Muslims Need Not Apply
Disband the International Commission on Religious Freedom
Nina Shea, Vice Chair of the International Commission on Religious Freedom, briefs President George W. Bush and staff on extreme shari’a in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (February 2005) / White House
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is being sued for religious discrimination. And for good reason. The government watchdog agency was created in 1998 to officially promote and protect religious freedom abroad, but it actually suppresses religious freedom, rather than supporting it. It should be shut down.
In 2009 Safiya Ghori-Ahmad, an American lawyer from Arkansas, fluent in Urdu and Hindi with a master’s degree in international development, accepted a USCIRF position as a South Asia policy analyst. The Commission hired her to conduct research on South Asia’s human rights and religious freedoms. According to the complaint, four weeks after she’d been offered the job, and after she had already left her previous job at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the offer was rescinded. Instead, she was given a temporary 90-day position that began in late July 2009.
The suit alleges that the Commission withdrew its job offer because Ghori-Ahmad is Muslim. She was told, she says, that the job couldn’t start because of a hiring freeze—but she saw others hired during that same period. Once on the job, according to the suit, her supervisor told her that Commissioner Nina Shea “would be upset that USCIRF had hired her because she was Muslim and had been affiliated with a Muslim organization,” and then “suggested ways that Ms. Ghori-Ahmad could limit the negative impression her beliefs and background would create with members of the Commission.” The suit claims that the supervisor recommended that she push back her start date to avoid certain commissioners and “call in sick” on days when certain commissioners might be in the office, to avoid running into them. This supervisor also allegedly told her to “downplay her religious affiliation,” and “emphasize that she was a mainstream and moderate Muslim” who “didn’t even cover her hair.” Legal briefs also claim: “Internal USCIRF email and discussions make clear that Ms. Ghori-Ahmad’s national origin and religion drove USCIRF’s ultimate decision to rescind its job offer. For example, Shea wrote that hiring a Muslim like Ms. Ghori-Ahmad to analyze religious freedom in Pakistan would be like ‘hiring an IRA activist to research the U.K. twenty years ago.’”
In an open letter to the Washington Post in June 2012, Ms. Shea claimed that she did not use the words “hiring a Muslim.” She countered that “the first 13 words of this quote—as is clear in the legal complaint—are not mine . . . What is especially problematic are the words ‘hiring a Muslim,’ which imply that I am a religious bigot . . . I voiced opposition to Ms. Ghori-Ahmad because of the bias evident in some of her writings.”
And yet such a comment would be consistent with Shea’s record. The suit describes Shea as “a long-time vocal critic of Islam as a religion, majority-Muslim countries, and Muslims generally.” She vehemently opposed the Cordoba House/Park51 project (the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”), as did the USCIRF’s prominent former commissioner Leonard Leo. She is a prominent advocate for persecuted Christians who stated in a 2001 interview, “I believe that religious freedom is universal . . . but at the same time I find that religious freedom is only fully understood in this country—not even in the west, but in this country.” Despite such stances, Shea felt it appropriate to ask whether Ghori-Ahmad’s writings and advocacy betrayed a bias.
This is part of a pattern at USCIRF of questioning the motives and patriotism of American Muslims. Most recently, Mitch McConnell appointed M. Zuhdi Jasser as a USCIRF Commissioner. Jasser, a practicing Muslim, is an Arizona cardiologist who founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a conservative lobbying group that promotes “the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.” He also served as the narrator in the controversial film The Third Jihad, which alleges a conspiracy of radical Muslims to undermine the United States from within.
Why would an agency dedicated to promoting religious freedom abroad discriminate against religious minorities within the United States?
This is not religious freedom. This is a toxic combination of Christian supremacy and flagrant bias against Islam.
For Shea and her sympathizers, since religious freedom can only be understood by Americans with “mainstream” beliefs, it can only be extended to Americans with those same beliefs. Even American Muslims who present themselves as moderates should have their motives questioned and their records examined. According to the suit, Ms. Shea wrote in an email that Ms. Ghori-Ahmad’s profession of tolerance could be dismissed as a sham because it would have been “really stupid” for her to have revealed what Shea believed must be her real views. Islam, in Shea’s mind, equals intolerance, and she was personally committed to exposing this alleged Muslim hypocrisy abroad.
This is not religious freedom. This is a toxic combination of Christian supremacy and flagrant bias against Islam. In this view, “religious freedom” is anything but a pluralist mission to make the world safe for different ways to be religious; it means, rather, a mission to protect American majority religious interests from perceived threats from minority religious traditions.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finished its investigation of Ghori-Ahmad’s case in March 2010, and in May 2010 issued an Acknowledgement and Order according to which both Ghori-Ahmad and USCIRF were allowed to “obtain certain discovery from each other.” But according to the complaint USCIRF refused to produce documents and denied access to the commissioners involved in rescinding Ghori-Ahman’s offer for a permanent job. She then requested a hearing before an administrative judge, who dismissed the case. According to the suit, “USCIRF—an entity created by Congress to promote religious freedom—argued that it could discriminate against employees without sanction because it was not subject to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The judge agreed. But subsequent legal reforms sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (H.R. 2867) made USCIRF subject to the Civil Rights Act. In June 2012 Ghori-Ahmad filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, alleging that USCIRF had illegally discriminated in hiring on the basis of religion. The suit has been wending its way through complex procedural hurdles; at this moment, it appears that the suit will proceed to trial.
Some within USCIRF have been appalled by the treatment of Ahmad. Bridget Kustin, a former USCIRF researcher, resigned in protest. Knox Thames, the commission’s policy and research director, is quoted in the suit as admitting that Ghori-Ahmad’s offer had been retracted because “certain Commissioners objected to her Muslim faith and affiliation . . . He said he was sorry this had happened.” Tom Carter, former communications director for the Commission, told The Daily Beast that, “the Durbin reforms give USCIRF a do-over. Hopefully, the new commissioners will take the opportunity to get it right this time.”
But will they? And, more fundamentally, what would it mean to “get it right?” The USCIRF needs more than an overhaul. Simply broadening the commission’s mandate to clarify that it must protect Muslims or other disfavored minority religions isn’t sufficient. Government promotion of religious freedom is, by its very nature, a flawed enterprise because the government inevitably becomes involved in deciding which religions, and which forms of which religions, are deserving of protection. Any government position on which religions to protect is necessarily tangled in that government’s political commitments, interests, and biases.
Some will counter that the USCIRF can be fixed by appointing “better” commissioners. After all, none of the commissioners identified in the lawsuit is still serving. Perhaps future Muslim-American job candidates will not be required to write an essay to prove that they are “objective and unbiased,” as was asked of Ahmad. But who will determine who the “right” person is, politically and religiously? Simply asking the question reveals the project’s fatal flaw: no commissioner selected by politicians can possibly stand above religious politics. No governmental officer—no government, period—should be taking on the role of religious arbiter, at home or abroad. A commission that promotes “religious freedom” may be nearly impossible to oppose—and yet it is an inevitably Orwellian project.
Ghori-Ahmad and USCIRF may reach a settlement. If not, this trial will surely become, as Christianity Today describes it, “one of the most ironic in American history, with the congressional commission charged with monitoring religious freedom around the world defending its own employment practices in court.”
Meanwhile, the rest of us must not lose sight of the bigger questions. A Department of Religious Freedom inevitably takes an official position on religion—and is therefore a contradiction in terms. It’s time to decommission the commission.
Editor’s Note: Katrina Lantos Swett, the current chair of the USCIRF, has responded to this article.
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About the Author
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is Public Voices Fellow at the Op-Ed Project and Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. She is co-organizer of a research project on the politics of religious freedom funded by the Luce Foundation.
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What's your agenda to push Muslims into positions where they clearly have no place?
Shame on Commissioner Shea.
Good news is that for every bigot out there, there are millions of great people as evidenced by the support that Ms. Gori-Ahmad received from the staff at the commission & some other commentators here.
God bless us all and God bless America!
In consideration of the fact that Muslims seem ready to fight with everyone at the drop of a hat, it would probably be a good idea to avoid hiring them.
Former USCIRF Commissioner Imam Talal Eid and I cosponsored a Huffington Post article on religious freedom. Former Pakistani legislator Farahnaz Ispahani and I have co-authored several articles defending Muslim women, minorities and political dissidents. For the past seven years, Rebiya Kadeer, spokeswoman for the Uighur community of China, and Zainab al Suwaij, director of the American Islamic Congress, have served on my advisory board at Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, of which I am the founding director. For my advocacy on their community's behalf, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA honoured me with the Community's inaugural 'Ahmadiyya Muslim Humanitarian Award.' I also have authored several studies on Saudi Arabia’s textbooks in conjunction with the Gulf Institute and its director Ali Al-Ahmed, a Muslim journalist. I frequently highlight the cases of Muslims advocating religious tolerance in my writings, for example, my article "Iran's Sakharovs," profiling the ayatollahs and Islamic scholars imprisoned in Iran for rejecting clerical rule because it curbs religious freedom. I have regularly organized and sponsored briefings that provide a platform in Washington for many Muslim speakers who personify tolerance within Islam, such as Nasser Kader, Denmark's first Muslim parliamentarian, and Dr. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, whose prolific writings include books on religious tolerance. I also work for the religious freedom of Mandeans, Yizidis, Zoroastrians, Baha'is, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Falun Gong, Christians and other persecuted religious minorities and individuals. Finally, I have not opposed the building of the Ground Zero mosque, much less done so "vehemently." Shakman Hurd's fact-challenged attack on me and USCIRF is not worthy of the Boston Review.
What's your agenda to push Muslims into positions where they clearly have no place?
Really? You've never spoken out against the Ground Zero mosque?
I think this 5 page article in the National Review speaks differently:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/243639/ground-zero-mosque-br-whos-charge-nina-shea?pg=5
"It is not 'Islamophobic' or disrespectful to seek answers to these questions. Transparency is one of our best defenses in this ideological war."
-Shea
So this is an ideological war now? You realize that simply by calling it that, you've evoked one. Mainstream Muslims are peaceful and loving. You have only cited examples from extremists that you try to claim are mainstream. When was the last time a Muslim tried to convert you? When was the last time you were a victim of prejudice at the hands of a Muslim? The article you've written is so overtly biased that any middle schooler could identify it. That's not to say that Hurd's exposition above doesn't have her own opinions all over it...but after reading YOUR article, I can only say that confirms her views. I hope you lose in court. Truly. You deserve it. You have no business in the business of human rights.
It's great you've written so many things on religious freedom. You should try practicing that some time.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council is not the Muslim Brotherhood. Sorry! Thanks for playing.
I wouldn't doubt if half these comments are actually just Nina Shea typing in different names.
Omar, Hera & Co:
You should learn something about Islam before you regurgitate other bigots' fantasies. To be sure, there are many intolerant leaders among Muslims and they all deserve condemnation. But to expand from there to create a suspect in every Muslim is a rather Hitlerian attitude that is NOT an American value, even though it does appear to be a very Teapublican value.
There are evil examples in every faith and non-faith, let us not dive into the sewers of hate just because a Muslim happens to object to being discriminated against.
It's as if when talking about the IRA (Ireland) and the Shining Path (Peru), the term "Christian terrorists" were used to describe their actions and emphasize their religious affiliations.
Shea supported the right of the Ground Zero mosque under first amendment protections. She writes: “our constitution rightly protects the building of houses of worship, even when public sensibilities are offended – unlike, for example, Egypt, which uses just such a standard to limit the building of churches. The possibility that the Islamic Center could be a propaganda gift to the enemy by the mere fact of its proximity to the Ground Zero site (the site was close enough that the building there was damaged in the 9/11 attacks) has been deemed by authorities not to clear the high bar of the first amendment as a reason to permit its banning. Whether Park51 (or any other American mosque) will become a center of radicalism to an extent warranting its closure for the sake of homeland security – either under the new al-Awlaki standard or under some future standard necessitated by compelling reasons emerging within the ideological war at large – will remain to be seen.”
How could any Boston Review reader be confused about Shea’s position?
Professor Shakman Hurd is quick to condemn anyone who sees a need for homeland security. In “The International Politics of Secularism: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” she writes, “The Islamic republic provides the ultimate religious other for secularists to identify themselves against. Iran continues to function as a convenient repository for Western anxieties about religion, violence, and even secularism itself. This explains why contemporary U.S. relations with the Islamic republic remain so contentions.” P. 128
Amazing psychological acrobatics: she blames the West, and exculpates radical Islamist ideology, for fanatic Iranian behavior. Radical ideology is the fount of Islamist fanaticism. It so clearly provides and nurtures the convictions of those who, in Iran and elsewhere in the Islamic realm, act out and enforce a religious-based intolerance. Shakman Hurd thinks that our own secular progressives are making the Iranians subjugate women, gays and religious minorities, imprison hundreds of journalists, and develop a nuclear capacity to wipe out the Jews. Why?
It is a commonly known phenomenon in psychology that wives who are beaten by their husbands cling to the illusion that something in their own behavior is provoking the hateful attacks. This, because then by altering their own behavior they might gain some control of otherwise terror-filled lives. Yes, Professor Shakman Hurd, it is hard for some of us in the West to come to terms with “why they hate us.” But perhaps some of our academics will get past the denial stage to the healthy, sane realization that our world indeed contains – now as in the past -- irrational haters who mean us harm. Shea’s call then for us to actually think about radical Islamist ideology is not hate: it is lifesaving medicine.
I have. That's why I wrote it, Jafar.
Listen. It isn't an issue of "a few extremists." EVERY COUNTRY governed fully by islamic law accepts things like gender aparteid, forced veiling, halal wife beating, halal paedophelic marriage for girls, concubinage, death for apostates, blasphemers, open homosexuals, adulterers, 2nd class status and extreme restrictions on non-muslims, etc. The countries that accept such laws cover large swathes of the planet and the imposition of such laws is accepted as a theological imperative by virtually ALL islamic scholars - and the ideology is being carried foreward by revolutionary islamic groups in several countries as we speak. All four schools of islam as well as the Shia are in general agreement and internally consistent on virtually ALL such issues; And not surprisingly, the more closely the region adheres to those elements of islamic law, the more shariah compliant they are, the more supportive they are of islam's other classical tenet, war against the kuffar to enforce submission to islamic law. That's why Morsi calls for the release of the Blind Sheik, why the islamic scholars in Pak strew flowers in the path of the assassins of the governor who opposed its blasphemy law (Taseer), why iran arrests converts and hangs homosexuals and why all the fully islamic regimes in the region support the regime in Sudan, despite their genocides and enslvements. They share the same goals, the same central laws and values.
Strawman.
I ask that question of the equally cynical Elizabeth Hurd, who shows that the far left is just as capable as the far right of demonizing and defaming its opponents.
Meanwhile, there is nothing in Hurd's article that proves a single word she has uttered in accusation against those who champion freedom of religion.
Thus, even her ad hominem attempt to bring down the message -- religious freedom -- by attacking the messengers -- its supporters -- has failed utterly.
By the way, why would a reputable publication like Boston Review publish an ad hominem screed rather than an intelligent discussion about the subject?
Maybe to generate controversy and more web site visits, perhaps?
Just curious.
See for yourselves:
www.uscirf.gov
They defend everybody....it's obvious.
http://www.uscirf.gov/about-uscirf/commissioners.html
There are 8 USCIRF commissioners.....2 are Muslim, and 3 apparently are Jewish. Another is a progressive African-American pastor. Another is a female law professor at Harvard. Another is a professor at Princeton.
Does this look like the face of bigotry? Does this look anything like "Christian supremacy," Ms. Hurd?
It's time for the professor to start apologizing, because obviously this isn't going away anytime soon. It's all over the Internet.
As an apologist for Iran's theocracy, Hurd mimics its medievalist justice system of guilty until proven innocent while smearing those who dare to disagree with her craven surrender to tyranny.
You are clearly a violent uneducated racist fool. You are such a stupid tool that you would defend the attacks against Boston this week, as well, just as the brainless liberals. I am not sure how you were able to stop toking from your bong and shooting up to be able to actually type your drivel before going back to your curbside profession.