The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill that would extend religious protections to advocates of circumcision and ritual slaughter in addition to atheists. The bill addresses what its sponsors describe as an increase in religious persecution in recent years.
The bill, which passed on May 16, would broaden the definition of “violations of religious freedom” in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to include the persecution of advocates of male circumcision or ritual animal slaughter. This bill also now makes atheists a new protected class.
The measure, which now moves to the Senate for consideration, was named in honor of retired Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, who had been a longtime champion of human rights and who had authored the 1998 law.
“The world is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of international religious freedom, a crisis that continues to create millions of victims; a crisis that undermines liberty, prosperity and peace; a crisis that poses a direct challenge to the U.S. interests in the Middle East, Russia, China and sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who authored the bill, said in a statement.
U.S. government and European Jewish officials have said that in recent years, there have been increasing calls in northern European countries for an end to circumcision and ritual slaughter. This has been spurred in part by anti-Muslim hostility.
The bill’s tier system for how well or how poorly countries protect religious freedom would be similar to the one used in the annual State Department report on human trafficking. That report is very influential, and countries that want to be in the U.S.’s good graces strive to improve their ranking by cracking down on the practice.
Smith is the chairman of the House subcommittee on human rights, and as a co-chairman of the Helsinki Committee, the congressional panel that monitors human rights abroad, has made the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe a focus.
When Smith’s office announced the bill, it headlined the statement “Combating Persecution of Christians and Anti-Semitism.”
However, many of the bill’s protections would extend in the current climate to moderate Sunni Muslims and non-Sunni Muslim sects in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Myanmar.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., the bill’s lead Democratic sponsor, said in the same statement that the bill would “better address the religious freedom and violent extremism problems being experienced in the 21st century.”
The bill integrates the 1998 law’s protections into U.S. national security priorities, mandating that the ambassador at large for religious freedom, which is currently Rabbi David Saperstein, a veteran Reform movement leader, report directly to the Secretary of State. The bill also adds new requirements for presidential reporting to Congress of religious freedom violations and training for diplomats in identifying violations of religious freedoms.