Religious Intolerance: Israel and Ireland

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Wednesday June 15, 2011 16:51 by Peter Mulholland

No democracy would admit to being intolerant of minority faiths or opposed to religious liberty. But...

On May 23, 2011, the Israeli Special Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs Task Force on minority religious groups presented a 48-page report to the Minister of Welfare. The Report has been described as being "a blueprint for systematic, government-fuelled intolerance directed at minority religious communities throughout Israel".

The Report categorised around 80 belief systems as being ‘cults’ or ‘sects’ and recommend defining a cult as being a group that converges around one person or idea and adopts thought-control methods, encourages emotional dependency, loyalty, obedience and subordination to the leader. ‘Thought-control’ or ‘mind-control’ are the terms that anti-cult activists now use in place of the widely discredited ‘brainwashing’ thesis and they predominate in the Report with opposing views being only briefly presented before being dismissed on the grounds that “therapists dealing in the subject in Israel claim... that mind control techniques are used in recruiting cult members” (page 22). Only two ‘therapists’ are named in the Report and Israeli academics specialising in the study of religions have identified both as being anti-cult activists.

The Report also recommended that a national hotline be set up for the public to report suspicious groups and that a National Institute be established for the purpose of deterring vulnerable individuals from becoming involved and with powers to intervene and provide for the rehabilitation of defectors or people ‘rescued’ from designated cults.

Writing in the ‘The Huffington Post’ on May 31st, Joseph Grieboski pointed out that the Report was released just the day before Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress and stated, “As for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths in the city.” As Grieboski put it “No democracy would admit to being intolerant of minority faiths or opposed to religious liberty”. However, he continued, “if the Report's recommendations are implemented, this will no longer be the case” and he describe it as being “a blueprint for systematic, government-fuelled intolerance directed at minority religious communities throughout Israel”.

Describing the tactic used to discriminate against targeted minority faiths in some countries Grieboski said it is to redefine religion in such a way as to exclude certain minority belief systems and have them designated ‘cults’ or ‘sects’. This tactic has been deployed by ‘Christian’ anti-cult activists and ‘professional’ ‘deprogrammers’ here in Ireland since the 1980s when a group of Irish Bishops issued a pastoral on the danger of ‘cults’ and ‘non-denominational’ groups and journalist Carol Coulter responded with a book entitled "Are Religious Cults Dangerous?"

I understand that the Israeli Report and recommendations have now been accepted by Minister Kahlon and that a group of about 25 Israeli scholars – mostly sociologists, anthropologist and historians of religion - have sent him a strongly worded letter of protest against the committee and its recommendations.

And one expert in the field of religious studies wondered if the ‘moral entrepreneurs’ who concern themselves with ‘brainwashing’ and ‘cults’ might themselves be the most susceptible to the kinds of behaviours they deplore.

A new MA Contemporary Religions programme will be offered by the Study of Religions department at UCC Cork from September 2011. This is the first programme of its kind in Ireland. See http://www.ucc.ie/en/studyofreligions/

For more on "Ireland's New Religious Movements" follow the link below.