Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the most powerful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), who is not in his place. I also thank the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) for initiating the debate.

Alongside extreme poverty, growing income inequality and climate change, I rate extremism in relation to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as one of the four most powerful threats to the world in the 21st century. In fact, it could be said that, in some places, extremism is the cause of one or two of the other threats. In the UK, as many speakers have said, we have a responsibility. We can see in our history the suffering caused by religious strife and persecution, as well as the benefits that freedom of speech and of religion can bring. I welcome the Foreign and Commonwealth Office making the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of religion or belief a key priority. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, to Baroness Warsi, to my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), to the Minister and to Foreign Office staff for beginning to implement that critical priority.

The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and to change one’s religion, which is important, and the freedom to manifest it in teaching, practice, worship and observance, all of which are in article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights, are not options. They are a fundamental requirement of belonging to the family of nations. The universal declaration of human rights was put together following the horrors of the second world war. It is not some kind of optional extra. It is a foundation stone of a civilised and just world. Any state that does not uphold it or pretends to do so must be challenged and challenged again by the international community.

Pakistan has been referred to several times in the debate, and rightly so, but we should also refer to other countries. There is a measure of freedom of religion in Pakistan, because we do see churches and worshippers there, but there are countries where we do not see a single church or a single building of a faith other than the authorised one. We do not hear so much about those countries—Saudi Arabia, for example—simply because there is no freedom at all. Sometimes a little bit of freedom results in persecution, because there is a measure of a presence of one particular faith. We should bear that in mind as we highlight countries in this debate.

We should challenge countries not only on the basis of their people’s fundamental human rights, but because in the long term persecution will severely damage the countries themselves. In order to succeed in today’s world, countries need people who are encouraged to innovate, challenge, inquire and take risks. If they expect that but say that people must believe in God, or cannot believe in God, or can only follow a certain lifestyle, making them into criminals if they do not conform, they should not be surprised if those people take their talents elsewhere, if they have not already imprisoned or executed them.

Take my family origins as an example. I come from a Huguenot background. We were expelled from France more than 400 years ago because of our Protestant faith. Yet the Huguenots brought to Britain the seeds of the industrial revolution, which changed the face of this country for ever—the Courtauld family was perhaps the most prominent—and France lost several decades of economic development as a result. It would be simplistic to correlate the lack of human rights, including freedom of religion, with economic progress. The presence of abundant natural resources can give Governments the ability to buy such progress, but that approach is unsustainable in the long term. The best way to build a state that can stand the test of time is to build one that enables all its people to flourish, that includes and does not exclude, and that celebrates its diversity, rather than being afraid of it.

Of course, there is another side. Freedom of religion and belief also involves exercising that freedom, as with any freedom, with great responsibility. Incitement to violence or any other crime can never be excused by being covered in the cloak of religion. I reiterate the point my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin made about the importance of people of all faiths in this country standing up for such freedoms in countries from which their families might have originally come.

[Rehman Chishti]

I visited Saudi Arabia two years ago with the all-party group. As someone from a Muslim faith, I made it quite clear to its parliamentary Shura Council that it should allow people from the Christian community to build churches there, just as people from the Muslim community who come here from other countries can build mosques. It is only fair that people of other faiths in Saudi Arabia should be able to build their places of worship.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful statement, and I absolutely agree.

As has already been pointed out, there is a global trend of increasing persecution of people of all religions and none. I want to make a few remarks about Tanzania, whose all-party group I chair. I also had the privilege of living there for 11 years. Tanzania has a secular constitution and has been noted for its religious freedom since independence in 1961. It has been a model of harmony, instituted by its first President, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Yet recently we have seen a disturbing rise in the incidence of religious attacks, particularly on Christians. That reflects the rise in extremist Islamist action in both the Sahel and further south in sub-Saharan Africa. We need to support Tanzania and other countries, such as Kenya, and indeed Nigeria, in their work to maintain freedom, peace and stability against all those who wish to destroy it.

In my constituency we have an organisation called the Dalit Freedom Network. We must also not forget those peoples who find their rights at risk because of the families and societies into which they were born. I commend all those who, sometimes at the cost of their freedom or their life, stand up for groups around the world who are persecuted not just because of their faith or their political views but simply because of who they were born to.

Queen Elizabeth I is believed to have said that she did not wish to make windows into men’s souls. A country that follows that maxim—that works for and protects all its people, whatever their beliefs, background or lifestyle—rather than waging war on minorities is much more likely to flourish than one that does not.