Religion News Service reports on an unprecedented meeting between European Union officials and members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom to discuss the possibility of cooperative efforts to promote religious liberty around the world.
Dennis de Jong and Peter van Dalen, co-presidents of the EU working group, discussed the group’s first annual report on freedom of religion in the world. They argued that religious freedom should be given more prominence in EU foreign policy and gave recommendations for 15 countries where the situation is particularly dire.
“In Egypt, Coptic Christians must be able to freely and safely practice their faith. In Pakistan, we demand that hate speech be scrapped from school books, in particular where they are subsidized by the EU. In India, we’d like to see states that have introduced anti-conversion legislation repeal those provisions,” van Dalen said.
This meeting comes on the heels of President Obama’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast emphasizing the importance of international religious freedom to American values and interests. Sadly, as I posted earlier this week, some who disagree with the President on other issues took issue with those remarks.
