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UPCOMING EVENTS

February 29, 2012
February President's Interfaith Challenge Roundtable
March 1, 2012
Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right
March 6, 2012
How Far has Medical Male Circumcision for HIV Prevention in Africa Advanced?
April 11, 2012
Religious Freedom and Equality: Emerging Conflicts in North America and Europe
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RELATED PROGRAM

Religious Freedom Project
Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs has received a $2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to support the interdisciplinary study of religious ...

RECENT MEDIA






Book_silenced

January 31, 2012

Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide

What is the effect of blasphemy and apostasy laws on basic religious and political freedoms of Muslim-majority countries? What happens when Western governments and bodies like the United Nations begin passing similarly motivated restrictions on speech? These and other questions were addressed by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea as they discussed their new book, Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide at a Religious Freedom Project event on Tuesday, January 31, 2012. Looking at the experience of hundreds of victims, from political dissidents to journalists to artists and religious reformers, the authors examined the political effects of such laws, as well as non-governmental fatwas and vigilante intimidation, on Muslim societies. The event included a response by John Voll, Professor of Islamic history and associate director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.


Featuring

Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and the author and editor of more than twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom, including more recently, Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion (2009), Religious Freedom in the World (2008), and Radical Islam's Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law (2005). He is also the author of several hundred articles, and his writings have been translated into Russian, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Albanian, Japanese, Malay, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese. He is in frequent demand for lectures and media appearances, including interviews on ABC Evening News; CNN; PBS; Fox; the British, Australian, Canadian, South African, Japanese Broadcasting Corporations, and Al Jazeera. His work has been published in, or is the subject of, articles in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, First Things, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Reader's Digest, and many other newspapers and magazines.

Nina Shea

Nina Shea

Nina Shea is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, where she directs the Center for Religious Freedom, a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and an international human-rights lawyer. For over a decade, she has worked for the advancement of individual religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy. She helped organize and lead a coalition of churches and religious groups that worked to end a religious war against non-Muslims and dissident Muslims in southern Sudan; in 2004 and 2005, she advised in the drafting of the religious freedom provisions in Iraq’s constitution; and, she authored and edited two reports, Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance (2006), and Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques (2005), both of which translated and analyzed Saudi governmental publications that teach hatred and violence against the religious “other.” She regularly presents testimony before Congress, delivers public lectures, organizes briefings and conferences, and writes frequently on religious freedom issues. She is the author of In the Lion’s Den, which documents worldwide Christian persecution. She is a graduate of Smith College, and American University’s Washington College of Law. In February 2008, she participated in the Berkley Center’s “Why Religious Freedom? The Origins and Promise of U.S. International Religious Freedom Policy” symposia.

Participants

John Voll

John Voll

John Voll is Professor of Islamic History and Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University. From 1965-1995 Voll taught and researched at the University of New Hampshire. He ha...