Freedom of religion or freedom from religion?

The theme of the major international conference Warsaw Dialogue of Democracy , which is being held in Warsaw in October 2019 at the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland and the OSCE, was freedom of conscience and religion.

The issues discussed by its participants were related to the problems of realization of freedom of conscience in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, in the post-Soviet space and in other countries.

The participants in the discussion agreed that freedom of religion and belief is one of the main markers of a democratic state. The persecution of believers in a democratic state is unacceptable: persecution in the field of religion is a direct path to totalitarianism and authoritarianism. First of all, because issues of religion are often directly related to the formation of an individual's identity, self-esteem, morality and ethics. This is quite an intimate and very important sphere of human life, in many respects, according to those discussing it, which forms the basis for the realization of other freedoms - freedom of assembly or freedom of speech.

“It is impossible to talk about the secularism or religiosity of a particular person, ” said one of the speakers, a Jew, “ because there are no unbelievers, each person is familiar with the vertical dimension in his life - with issues of ethics, morality, conscience . ” But, they objected, there may be a secular state - and it is precisely such a state that can be equally removed from each of the religious organizations of this state, and, therefore, will be able to protect the rights of believers belonging to any of these religions - it does not matter whether believers form a majority or a minority in this state.

“Any religion can become a minority in one of the countries ,” one of the conference participants, a specialist in religion and law, rightly noted.

At the same time, looking at the situation in Russia, we see that in terms of protecting the feelings of believers, the realization of the right to freedom of conscience turns out to be in some contradiction with the right to freedom of speech. Of course, a democratic society must protect the rights of minorities, including religious minorities, but this should not be at the cost of severely restricting the rights of others, not at the level of the criminal code, as we see in the cases of application of Part 1 and Part 2 of Art. 148 of the Criminal Code on “insulting the feelings of believers”. The Sentiment Law was supposed to increase tolerance towards religious minorities, but this is not happening. On the contrary, we see that the law performs the function of censorship. And in a sense, it cannot work in any other way, since the very concept of “feelings of believers” lies outside the legal field.