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Is There a Human Right to Freedom of Religion?

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Abstract

A human right to freedom of religion is not equivalent to a right to tolerance. Human rights and tolerance-rules serve for different purposes and are based on different justifications. Tolerance-rules serve to protect a peaceful living together with strangers who share no common values. Human rights serve to protect every individual’s personhood. Religion can only be a matter of human rights, if and so far as it is a condition of development and maintenance of personhood. Discussion about a human right to freedom of religion makes sense only if we can identify a particular scope of protection which concerns only religion and if the freedom of religion is not embraced by wider-framed freedoms. The freedom of religious thoughts and the freedom of religious speech are embraced by the general human rights to freedom of thoughts and freedom of speech. Here, there is no need for a special human right to freedom of religion. The right not to be forced to act contrary to religiously founded moral rules is embraced by the general human right to freedom of conscience. And again, there is no need for a special human right. The target of religious practices in a narrower sense (rites) is to become flexible and porous and not to resist the threats of the sacral in order to avoid the destruction of personhood. Therefore, we have to recognize a human right to freedom of religious rites. It protects only the actions of accommodation to the overwhelming power of the sacral. It does not protect, however, any action with which it is intended to rule the world or to rule over others, to organize certain practical challenges, or to discover or to maintain scientific theories or technical means.

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Notes

  1. The Special Workshop Interculturalism vs Multiculturalism as a way of justifying human rights, headed by Akihiko Morita, Amos Nascimento, and the author.

  2. For the distinction between inter- and multicultural approach cf. Taylor 2012, 418. The article discusses the topic from a European perspective and in the context of particular problems in continental Europe.

  3. This expression is coined by Max Weber and often used by Jürgen Habermas—cf. Kaesler 2009

  4. For more details cf. Tiedemann 2012

  5. About different meanings of tolerance cf. Forst 2003, 42

  6. Cf. preamble of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: “Recognizing that these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.”

  7. Be aware of the difference between personhood and personality! Personhood is an ability. Personality is the result of a certain use of that ability.

  8. Article 1 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

  9. European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), jud. of July 13, 2012–16354/06—[Raëlien Suisse v. Switzerland], § 48.

  10. The ECtHR (supra) has concluded that it is suffice to examine the prohibition of a public poster campaign with religious content only under the freedom of expression. It is not required to examine separately the complaint under the aspect of freedom of religion (see § 79–80).

  11. Only religious hate speeches and similar forms of religious ideas according to which the foundations of human rights are questioned or denied cannot be integrated.

  12. Expressing thoughts is of course also a kind of acting. In the following chapters, I deal with kinds of acting beyond the pure expression of thoughts.

  13. ECtHR jud. of July 7, 2011–23459/03 – [Bayatyan v. Armenia], § 110 (regarding objection to military service)

  14. Talking about a “discovery” is not really appropriate. In fact, the studies on religion did not discover the dual world view by exploration of different religions in the world. A more appropriate description is that scholars of religious studies define the subject of their studies (“religion”) as the dual world approach. By definition: Where people share a dual world view there is religion. So, the concept of dual world view defines the concept of religion that is subject of religious studies. The discovery is that this dual world view approach is wide spread among almost any cultures in the world—see Hock 2008, 20.

  15. “My Wife and my Mother-in-Law” by William Ely Hill (1915), published first in “Puck”, issue of November 6, 1915.

  16. The German title of Eliade (1958) is “Das Heilige und das Profane.”

  17. Lao-Tzu: Tao Te Ching 76, 181.

  18. Cf. for more details: Tiedemann 2012, p. 83.

  19. “As a religious problem, the problem of suffering is, paradoxically, not how to avoid suffering but how to suffer, how to make a physical pain, personal loss, worldly defeat, or the helpless contemplation of others’ agony something bearable, supportable—something, as we say, sufferable” (Geertz 1987, p. 218).

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  1. Rangenbergstrasse 46, 60388, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Paul Tiedemann

  2. Department of Law, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany

    Paul Tiedemann

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Correspondence to Paul Tiedemann.

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This article is based on a talk delivered at the 26th World Congress of the International Association of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), July 21, 2013.

The author is a judge at the Administrative Court Frankfurt am Main, honorary professor at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, and adjunct Professor at Özyeğin-University Istanbul. The author thanks Prof James E. Hickey PhD, Hofstra University, Hempstead NY for the review of the text in terms of grammatical, stylistic, and orthographic mistakes. All remaining errors are his sole responsibility.

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Tiedemann, P. Is There a Human Right to Freedom of Religion?. Hum Rights Rev 16, 83–98 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-014-0342-2

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