[/caption]Carol Forsloff - While most Americans continue to reinforce the concept of religious freedom and the First Amendment rights of the Constitution, across the rest of the world religious tolerance and freedom have actually declined.
The Pew Forum conducted a three-year study on religious restrictions around the world. The organization’s research found that 6.9 billion people or nearly a third of the world’s population live in countries where government policies on religion or social hostilities involving religion have increased substantially during the period 2006 -2009.
Illustrations of this growing trend are reflected in government and social policies that have developed in Denmark and France. France has restricted Muslim women from wearing the burka and school children from wearing clothing that displays religious symbols. French conservatives view the increasing multiculturalism of France to be a threat to the French way of life. They point to a major difference in assimilation of Muslims in France and African Americans in the United States and that a lack of shared culture, language and religious belief is largely responsible for the problems France is experiencing with respect to dealing with immigrant groups.
White separatists and right-wing groups have found fertile ground in the stresses of assimilation. Dr. Orly Taitz is specifically directing Europe’s struggles with Muslim groups and tying this to America’s policies with the Middle East while targeting President Barack Obama as being sympathetic to the Muslim causes due to his father’s religious affiliation with Islam. She uses Denmark’s growing restrictions on Muslims as an example of the risks America faces if it continues to court Middle Eastern favor.
Recently England has faced riots in many sections of its major cities that the media has observed comes primarily from the youth in impoverished areas. Like Denmark and France, new immigrant youth find it difficult to find jobs in a recession, and many of these same youth do not wish to comply with new traditions in order to assimilate. US News and World Report pointed out in 2006 the growing problem Europe faces with respect to its immigrant population and the children of those immigrants and wrote: "Europeans are uncomfortable with Islam, and they see it as an alien body in their midst. ... Europe's got a huge problem, and they're just getting their minds around it now."
These cultural pressures in the middle of economic strife and competition are, according to experts, at the heart of the tensions among population groups, a tension that will likely grow and produce the right wing political growth, religious restrictions and community violence in response.
