Orrin Hatch: “In Pakistan the government consistently fails to protect its own citizens from religiously motivated violence, and the…”

“In Pakistan the government consistently fails to protect its own citizens from religiously motivated violence, and the courts exploit repressive anti-blasphemy laws to prosecute religious minorities. Egypt's courts convict and imprison citizens under the same pretext. In Sudan the government harasses its minority Christian population and subjects Muslims and non-Muslims alike to the punishments of Sharia law. The state even executes citizens who convert from Islam to another religion. Even in Europe, religious liberty is under attack, albeit in more subtle ways; take, for example, Switzerland, where a constitutional amendment placed a countrywide ban on the construction of minarets--a widely recognized symbol of Muslim prayer and devotion. In another blow to Europe's Islamic population, France recently outlawed the wearing of burqas and niqabs in public. When a Muslim woman appealed the ban to the European Court of Human Rights, the court upheld the law. What I have related here is only a small sampling of the manifold abuses taking place around the world. If I were to relate every instance of state-sponsored religious bigotry abroad, I would be speaking here for days. And none of this is to mention the war against freedom being waged by non-state actors. In the past decade, we have witnessed an unprecedented rise of terrorist groups and other criminal organizations seeking to eradicate religious liberty altogether.…”