Understanding world religions became part of US's foreign policy - Kerry

WASHINGTON, April 27 (KUNA) -- US Secretary John Kerry reiterated the importance of understanding religions in American foreign policy, especially with its "invasive impact on world events." "The better we understand religions, the more affective our diplomacy will be to advance our people," Kerry said in a speech at Baker's Institute for foreign policy, a think tank based in Rice University in Texas, late Tuesday.
Despite the US State Department being a completely secular institute, he explained, "it's a fact that religious believes have had an invasive impact on world events." Thus, and since 2013, the State Department has focused on enhancing its religious knowledge by creating an office and hire religious advisors as an effort to better engage religious leaders around the world as what is "necessary to make America safer," Kerry noted.
He reiterated that the US does not advocate for a faith over another but "we can't lead a world we don't understand." He said the US is "unalterably opposed to bigotry in all its forms," calling for equal rights and religious freedoms around the world as "people should be free to choose, practice and teach their own religions without persecution." He criticized voices in the US calling for barring on Muslims, reiterating "Muslims have lived in the US since the founding of the country, they fought in every war we went through, they lived with us, they are Americans." Kerry then mentioned some of the atrocities that are being committed in our times against religious minorities such as Buddists in China, Muslims in Burma, Christians in Southeast Asia and continuously the crimes committed by so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq since 2014.
On IS, Kerry reminded the audience of the voices of many Muslims leaders around the world and from all sects who condemned the acts of IS and that its contrary to the true spirit and message of the religion of Islam, but those voices may not be loud enough in some parts of the world.
Even though foreign fighter flow to IS have been reduced significantly according to Kerry, "it's still a generational fight," reiterating what the US Administration has repeated on occasions that the fight against IS will be long and against an ideology, "the real challenge is not to defeat one group, but to create a world where recruits for terrorism fall on deaf ears.
"This is a fight with the uncivilized and barbarians against civilization," Kerry noted. (end) yt.hb