Religious Freedom: The Contribution of Interreligious Dialogue Initiatives to a Cornerstone of Modern Democratic Societies

In a time of increased conflict that is either religious or masked as such, the international legal norm of the right to freedom of religion or belief is frequently challenged. As it is understood to be one of the four main freedoms of the human rights canon, the norm is tightly knit into the fabric of international law, most prominently in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1969), and the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (1981). Nevertheless, worldwide the norm is not enforced, with religious discrimination ranging from minor inequalities to persecution or death. Beside these legal answers to questions pertaining the organization of the relationship between state, individual and religion, transnational interreligious dialogue initiatives provide an institutionalized frame to deliberate on these questions. It thereby potentially promotes overcoming interreligious animosities and grievances as much as alleviating situations of interreligious discrimination. This contribution explores the actual influence of such dialogue initiatives and asks for mechanisms and action logics at work, regarding the right to the freedom of religion and belief. It starts by outlining the core components of the legal norm and discusses the difficulties of precisely outlining the norm content, which arise from the different legal statuses of the three aforementioned legal frameworks as much as their differing legal wording. Both issues provide ample justification for states to disregard the norm or challenge particular norm facets such as the right to change one’s religion or belief. Furthermore, the authors have created a theoretical dialogue and discourse concept that allows measuring the contribution of interreligious dialogue initiatives to a shared understanding of the norm content among members of diverse religious creeds. The state of research leads to assume that interreligious dialogue initiatives serve as institutionalized arenas in which the broad spectrum of norm contestation may take place. Necessarily, this may include the possibilities of stabilizing the secular norm in its current form as much as deviation from it in favour of other concepts or ultimately an erosion of the norm. In the second part of this paper, two cases will be analysed with regard to the aforementioned theoretical considerations. As its case studies, this paper examines the dialogue initiatives International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) and Religions for Peace (RfP). After an in-depth description of these initiatives’ thematically-discursive evolution/ genesis, case study-specific findings based on document-analysis and interview-data will be presented. Although at one point in time interwoven through some of their personnel, these two initiatives show significant difference in their engagement with the right to the freedom of religion and their influence on the content of the norm. In its third part, this contribution offers a comparative analysis of these two initiatives. The initiatives are empirically tested for certain attributes that are prone to either hinder or foster a shared understanding of the norm and its substantial parts.