Anti-racist policies are key to affirming religious freedom

On Jan. 12, I was invited to a roundtable on religious freedom organized by the progressive activist group Faith 2020 with diverse faith leaders and the BidenHarris transition team, notably Josh Dickson, the then president-elect’s national faith engagement director. Though my official credential was senior fellow at the Sikh Coalition, the White House didn’t want to hear about Sikhism; Dickson was there to hear what a religion scholar thinks should be his boss’s policy priorities on faith matters.

What I told him had as much to do with racial justice as religious freedom, as the two are inextricably linked. We can’t understand American racism without attending to the ways in which religion has been used to prop up white supremacy. It’s not only African Americans who have been treated this way. Religious minorities, from Jews to Hindus to Muslims, are seen through the lens of race as much as faith and have been discriminated against, personally and systemically.

In recent years, in addition, religion has been weaponized to uphold America’s racism. We saw this in President Trump’s answer to racial justice protesters last summer: He sent federal troops to clear his way to St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C., for a photo op with the Bible.

How might an anti-racist lens help expand our guarantees of religious freedom? For the past four years, and in some cases long before, the Sikh Coalition and so many other organizations at the intersection of faith and policy have been working to answer that question.

First, the new administration must address Trump’s decimation of America’s refugee policy

and the profound impact that’s had on religious freedom abroad. For Muslims in China and Myanmar, and for Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan, this continues to mean life or death. (Biden has said he will rescind Trump’s Muslim travel ban.)

In May 2020, candidate Biden called for the State Department to consider emergency refugee protections for Afghan Sikhs and Hindus, and he has more recently promised to raise the annual refugee cap back to 125,000.

The sooner that can happen, the quicker we can begin to return to being a nation that helps the world’s most desperate, which includes so many fleeing religious persecution in some of the poorest parts of the world.

Biden can go further by urging Congress to pass the No Ban Act, which would guard against future abuses. And it can work to eliminate policies, such as “extreme vetting,” that function as a backdoor ban on foreign travel.

There are other, longstanding problems that need longer-term solutions. Employment discrimination affects religious minorities in every facet of American life. When we deny people, including

millions in the U.S. military, their right to practice their faiths freely in the workplace, we ask them to choose between their sincerely held beliefs and their security and happiness.

We must also keep religious minorities safe in schools. Children from religious minority groups remain disproportionately bullied in our nation’s public classrooms. Much of the work to stop this must be done at the state level, beginning with teaching about world religions to mandated standards.. The feds can make sure that any schools receiving public funds, including charter and private, are not permitted to exclude students on the basis of religious beliefs.

Of course, there are many more issues. It’s been a rough few years for those of us who work in the justice space, and far longer for those of us whose families have been living through these challenges each and every day.

I’m grateful to see leadership that truly seems to care and wants to build something together. I’m hopeful for what’s to come.

Courtesy photo Simran Jeet Singh joined a roundtable to discuss religious priorities for the Biden administration.