International Religious Freedom roundtable
Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback is holding periodic meetings at the Department of State. Today was the third such meeting. I will just highlight my engagement.
The Ambassador has a clear mission – Religious freedom! Today he mentioned about tying religious freedom with economic prosperity. I have written a piece about it and he wants me to discuss at the next meeting.
The idea of creating safe zones for the refugees appealed to him. We have to preserve the dignity of refugees and work through the oppressors to rehabilitate them. He loved the idea and immediately said that is more efficient and economical. I made sure I did not claim the entire credit for this though- it was originally a Sean Hannity idea from a different perspective, he wanted to keep the refugees out, whereas I wanted to prevent the business of uprooting people from their own lands and legitimizing such expulsions by absorbing the forced-out populations elsewhere. This has to be stopped.
The Ambassador has scored several points with me. It was a timely comment on his part for individuals to defend the right of people other than their own faith. He said after observing that Hindus were talking about Hindu issues, Muslims were talking about Muslim issues, and Christians were talking about Christian issues and same went with the Jews. Before I could comment, he said it. I hope we all fight for the rights of people of others faiths than our own! Thank God that is what needs to be done. Greg Mitchell is doing this for all others and I am blessed to have stood up for the rights of everyone from Atheists to Zoroastrians including LGBTQ and Native American communities.
The talk about the ban on Bhagavad Gita in Siberia came up and my work and petition was a part of the solution, we flooded the calls to Russian Embassy in Delhi and DC. The OpEd was in Huffington Post, it is also available on Google. We also had written a letter to the Russian Embassy about usurping the land that belonged to Hare Krishna temple in Moscow. http://www.StandingupforOthers.com
There was a brief talk on Tartars. In 2012, a University in Tartaristan had invited me to speak on Pluralism, we were all set, but at the end, they could not pay for my airfare and we canceled. I wish I had approached someone to fund it. A year later the Bomber in Boston turned out to be from that part of the world; Chechnya. By the way, our website on Pluralism has third most visitors from Russia followed by India and China; the first two are USA and Canada.
The more you hear about the problems of Venezuela, Burma, Russia, Malaysia, India and other nations, they all sound identical in different formats. The majority wants to control the smaller groups and they feel threatened by the growth of their population….
Education is the key to helping the right-leaning men and women, who freak out when someone criticizes the Government of their country. They rather their nation goes to hell than criticize and correct the bad government.
Mike Ghouse
The Center for Pluralism is committed to building a cohesive America where no American feels excluded. If we can learn to respect the otherness of other and accept the God-given uniqueness of each one of us then conflicts fade and solutions emerge. Our vision is to see each one of us live securely in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. We bring Americans Together in social, religious, cultural, political, civic and other settings. The more we know each other, the fewer the misperceptions would be. At CFP we have programs in place to achieve this mission and offer pluralistic solutions on issues of the day.