Religious intolerance and persecution are going to bring the downfall of human civilization. The viciousness of those intent on discrediting even destroying the faiths of others is real. In nation after nation, major news regularly features turmoil and death motivated somehow by religion. Some of that is a get them before they get us mentality as if its part of some apocalyptic goal. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has said, The entire world is threatened by religious intolerance. Sure, we can appreciate those who are so fed up with all religions because the fundamentalists of many faiths go to extremes out of their self-righteousness. Its easy to point out that religious extremists, with their blind faith, are undermining whole national communities and using killing and torture as their way to impose their will. Certainly fear drives so much of it: Will the zeal and cunning of the devotees pull in my loved ones and make them strangers? Will they impose their rigid, legalistic values on our society, our government, our schools, our laws, our traditions?Minority religions like Bahais, Jehovahs Witnesses, Scientologists, Falun Gong, Palestinian Christians, Jews and Mormons, for example, regularly receive forms of hostility and persecution worldwide. Christianity itself commonly is called the most persecuted religion. Given its ubiquity worldwide, it stands to face the most opposition, not to mention facing resistance because of its aggressive mandate to "go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. On Tuesday, May 22, for example, the PBS series, Independent Lens, will zero in on the way Jehovahs Witnesses have been resisted and checked. The report is called From the Doorstep to the Courthroom: 400 Religious Persecution Cases on the Jehovahs Witness Docket Worldwide. It tells how governments themselves are sanctioning suppression and persecution. The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based worldwide religion contends that how its cases are litigated in their quest for rights to worship, speak out and assemble will shape how other religions will protect and retain its freedoms.And its not just tin-horn dictators in Third World countries doing the crackdowns. Its countries like France, India, Mexico, South Korea and Russia. (www.knocking.org/ReligiousPersecutionReport.html). There have been arrests, widespread vandalism, confiscation of land, denial to open houses of worship and prevention of evangelistic work.Clearly the peculiar distinctions of various religions are exploited by persecutors. Theres the Jehovahs Witnesses objections to blood transfusions or their doorway ministries; Mormons hard-to-shake history of polygamy; or the accusations that Scientology is pseudo-psychiatry and more a business than religion.The term cult is bandied about, a cheap and easy way to discredit. Established, longtime religions use their own forms of intense indoctrination on the young, and others emotionally vulnerable, often insisting theirs is the true and only way and all others are false and dangerous. That attitude, that arrogance alone, is so formidable that interfaith work calling for acceptance and respect are viewed by some as dangerous accommodation, polluting the stream.Muslims, of course, seem to be at the center of the debate. In the U.S., many Muslims feel constantly under suspicion, even surveillance, and they hear the considerable rants about Islam and whether is truly is a religion of peace. Meanwhile, that religion wins few friends because of the outrageous extremism, violence and human rights (treatment of women, for example) found across so many predominantly Muslim countries and in their sects. As I work with Valley Muslims, I constantly see that stereotype debunked. I must remind myself that there are some pretty rotten factions in many religions. And if civilization is to survive, fundamentalists and extremists need to be marginalized or held in check by faith moderates. We can start in the U.S. by adopting a true live-and-let-live attitude combined with strong dialogues with all faiths to insist that its in everyones interest that we maintain our tradition of religious pluralism.We should expect responsible and disciplined faiths that strive to develop spiritually healthy people on a fragile planet. Even those faiths that are especially persecuted need to examine their tactics and understand what is inherent in their faiths that leads to hostility and distrust. Faith and values, it seems, are too integrated into the fabric of political societies to wish religion away as muck-up-the-works trouble. Barriers put up to keep religion out serve no one. Barriers like that recent mistake made by a yearbook adviser in Higley to order the removal of God for seniors biography because of some notion that its a public school and theres something in the U.S. Constitution regarding church-state separation. The district apologized but the damage was done.Whether its denying a nurse from wearing a cross on her hospital rounds or some boneheaded decision by a fast-food chain to tell Muslim workers they cannot take a prayer break or that a hijab, or head scarf, cant be worn on the job, weve got to stop punishing people for being who they are, that their faith is part of what they are. Our goal should be to expect them to live up to, and display, the lofty ideals and values of that faith.

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