On November 18, the U.S. State Department staged a farce of arbitrarily  designating 10 countries including our country, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Myanmar as “countries of particular concern of religious freedom”.

Protecting religious freedom in each country is based on its historical tradition, customs and socio-political environment, and religious faith should contribute to sound development of the country and nation.

Moreover, the international standard for protecting religious freedom is not something which was made by the U.S.

Despite this, the U.S. is meddling in the issue of religious freedom in other countries applying the yardstick made of its own accord.

If that is the case, how about the real situation of “religious freedom” in the U.S.?

In November 2016, a 59-year-old man in a fit of hostile feeling against Islamism threatened to burn a dwelling house, a Muslim family was going to buy in Florida of the United States. In February 2017, a man living in Miami of Florida threatened to shoot Muslims while hurling abusive words to them, thus giving rise to public criticism.

In April 2018, in Kansas, 3 men were kept from exploding an apartment where Somalian Muslims were living as well as the mosque adjacent to this apartment. In Louisiana, a young man aged 22 committed crimes from March to April 2019 in which he set fire to 3 Baptist Churches where the African-Americans hold religious service.

In October 2010, the American magazine “Smithsonian” deplored as follows: Historical textbooks used in the American schools are written that a great number of vagabonds came to the American continent in search of religious freedom in the 1620s. But it was specious. What awaited them in reality was only a bloody tragedy.

In April 2019, the Center for American Progress noted that the U.S. is claimed to be a country based on the religious freedom, but such a principle is now in peril. It also said that the Americans’ rights to religious freedom are no more than hypocrisy which is aimed at forcing everything to serve for the interests of privileged Christians.

In August 2021, the American AP news reported that the public opinion poll showed that 35 % of the American adults answered their religious freedom was under threat and that half the Americans, in particular, recognize the fact that freedom of the Muslims is under a serious threat.

It also maintained that in July 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice organized religious freedom task force, but its aim is rather to legitimate its discrimination against the most vulnerable communities in the name of religious freedom.

According to the analysis by the FBI of hate crimes in the U.S., nearly 80 % of hate crimes committed out of the religious motive since 2017 were attributable to tendency towards anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish.

The above facts clearly prove that “religious freedom” much touted by the U.S. government is nothing but falsehood and deception as well as political means of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

The U.S. would be well advised to protect religious freedom in its own country first before criticizing religious freedom in other country.