JFK's call for religious freedom can transform places like Pakistan
On the anniversary of JFK's assassination, the world should heed his call for religious freedom. It is the best way to counter religious extremism in places such as Pakistan, where the Taliban has chosen a new leader, as it compels intolerant forms of religion to face competing beliefs.
Malala Yousafzai speaks at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 27. The Pakistani Taliban, responsible for an October 2012 attack on Ms. Yousafzai, have chosen Maulana Fazlullah to replace their leader Hakimullah Mehsud who was killed by a US drone strike last week. Op-ed contributor Katrina Lantos Swett writes: 'It is where religious freedom is most dishonored or repressed that the forces of violent religious extremism are likely to thrive.' Jessica Rinaldi/AP/File
By Katrina Lantos Swett, Op-ed contributor
Katrina Lantos Swett is vice chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
November 7, 2013
Washington
As the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, much can be said about his focus on freedom. In speeches both before and after he became president, Kennedy championed human rights around the world and called out the Soviets and their satellite states for violating these liberties.
One aspect of his views bears particular mention: the roles of religion and religious freedom as engines and emblems of progress, roles that have particular resonance across the globe today.
In an Independence Day speech in Boston in 1946, Kennedy cited the 19th-century French nobleman and author of “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote that “unless religion is the first link, all is vain.” On the presidential campaign trail in September 1960, speaking at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Kennedy lamented that “we have become missionaries abroad of a wide range of doctrines – free enterprise, anti-Communism and pro-Americanism – but rarely ... religious liberty.”
And in his inaugural address, he stated that “the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2013/1107/JFK-s-call-for-religious-freedom-can-transform-places-like-Pakistan