Convention on the International Protection of Places of Worship
August 15th, 2003 by sfuqua
“The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) takes great pleasure in presenting to the public an International Convention on the International Protection of Places of Worship. It is our humble hope that the proposed Convention will be adopted by the United Nations in the near future.
The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) takes
great pleasure in presenting to the public an International Convention on the
International Protection of Places of Worship. It is our humble hope that the
proposed Convention will be adopted by the United Nations in the near
future.
Work on the Convention began soon after JUST announced its campaign for
the protection of places of worship on 3 April 2002. A sub-committee
comprising JUST members and friends from different religious backgrounds was
established under the chairpersonship of Professor Abdullah al-Ahsan with
Abdul Basir as the Secretary. One of the members of the sub-committee, Prof.
Shad Saleem Faruqi, a constitutional lawyer, prepared a comprehensive draft
of the Convention which then received inputs from various individuals inside
and outside JUST. One of those valuable inputs came from Professor Richard
Falk, one of the world’s leading authorities on International Law, who is
also a member of JUST’s International Advisory Panel (IAP).
The Convention which all of us have helped to formulate comprises a
Preamble and six Articles. Article 1, deals with “Protection of Places of
Worship”; Article 2 with “Equal Treatment”; Article 3 is on “Permissible
Restrictions”; Article 4 focusses on “Registration of Public Places of
Worship”; Article 5 looks at “Remedies”; and Article 6 outlines the structure
and functions of a Commission on “Public Places of Worship.”
The proposed Convention has been posted on the
JUST website and will be published
in the July issue of the JUST Commentary. It will also be distributed to
thousands of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and individuals throughout
the world. JUST hopes that other NGOs and individuals in turn will
disseminate the proposed Convention as widely as possible. We are also
counting upon the media to give maximum publicity to the document.
The aim is to obtain endorsement for the proposed Convention from a broad
spectrum of global civil society. JUST will go all out to ensure that
hundreds of groups and individuals from every continent give their
wholehearted support to the Convention. The Convention will be in circulation
for at least the next six months — till mid-January 2004.
Once solid support has been secured from global civil society, JUST and
other NGOs will try to persuade governments to endorse the Convention. In
this regard, JUST is looking forward to working with the Malaysian
government, especially since Malaysia is one of a handful of multi-religious
societies in the world which has a long and distinguished record of
protecting the places of worship of the different religious communities that
constitute the Malaysian nation.
With the cooperation of the Malaysian and other governments, JUST and
global civil society, will attempt to convince the UN of the importance of
adopting the proposed Convention. If the Convention is ratified by the member
states of the UN, it would mean that there is an international law protecting
places of worship.
Such a law is vital at this point in time. For it will foster global
consciousness of the imperative need to ensure that each and every place of
worship is treated with the respect and reverence it deserves. At the same
time, a Convention which carries the weight of law will, hopefully, help to
avert, or at least minimise, the danger of groups and individuals destroying
places of worship. It will also strengthen the resolve of individual
governments which are already committed to the protection of places of
worship in their own countries to continue to discharge their responsibility
with courage and integrity.
Finally, in a world where inter-religious conflicts are escalating, a
Convention on the protection of places of worship is a modest endeavour to
bring different religious communities together through a common cause, a
shared commitment. It is a small step in the long journey to global
peace.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just
World (JUST)
