What the U.S. should learn from the high cost of protest in Iran

Azadeh Shahshahani is a member of TUPOCC and the chair of the NLG South regional chapter. Today she published this guest column on the struggle for religious freedom among Muslims in the U.S.

Religious freedom unkept vow in U.S.
By Azadeh Shahshahani
Wednesday, June 24, 2009

I have been watching with interest and apprehension the movement reverberating in my birthplace over the past few weeks. The cries of "Azadi" by the people who have poured out in the tens of thousands into the streets of Iran to demand greater freedom have defied the distance between us.

I was born in Iran four days after the 1979 revolution. My name, Azadeh, means free-spirited, signifying the great hopes that my parents and the many other parents who named their daughters Azadeh that year bore for the revolution.

Their hopes were soon dashed, however, as the oppressive regime of the shah was replaced by a theocracy where rules governed every aspect of people's lives in public, and even private, spaces.

In this system, advancement in professional and especially official ranks depends in part on the extent to which one chooses to profess religiosity, as dictated by the regime.

With this background, one of the freedoms that was most appealing to me when I came to the United States at age 16 was the right, free from governmental interference, to practice religion — or no religion at all.

I learned that this right is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. In my trips back to visit family and friends, I often boasted about the guarantee of religious freedom in the United States.

This fundamental right has been increasingly denied, however, to Muslim-Americans in the years after Sept. 11, tarnishing America's reputation as a beacon of religious freedom.

Last week, the ACLU released a report demonstrating how American Muslims' right to practice zakat, or charitable giving, has been violated.

Zakat is a religious obligation for all observant Muslims and is one of the five pillars of Islam. Given annually and in a calculated amount, zakat is a proportionately fixed contribution collected from surplus earnings of Muslims.

The ACLU report shows that U.S. terrorism finance laws and policies have had a chilling effect on Muslim charitable giving by creating an atmosphere of fear.

These laws have authorized executive branch officials to target charities based on secret evidence — without notice, charges, an opportunity to respond or meaningful judicial review.

Closer to home, I recently joined Lisa Valentine and her husband before the Georgia Committee on Access and Fairness in the Courts.

Valentine testified about the experience she faced at a Douglasville courthouse, where she was made to choose between her right to free exercise of religion and her right to access the court.

Valentine, also known by her Islamic name, Miedah, spoke about the experience of being denied access to the courthouse on Dec. 16 because she wore a head scarf, or hijab.

She found herself in handcuffs and in jail with her hijab removed after Douglasville Municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins sentenced her to 10 days in jail for contempt.

Valentine and other Muslim women were denied access to the Douglasville Municipal Court, even after they expressly conveyed to court officials that the wearing of the head scarf is an expression of their faith.

Muslim-Americans, like all people in the United States, should have the right to express their religious beliefs free from discrimination.

As eloquently stated by President Barack Obama in his Cairo speech last month, "freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion."

The president acknowledged the right of Muslim women and girls to wear the hijab and recognized the adverse effect of terrorism finance laws on Muslim charitable giving.

The administration and governments on the state and local levels need to follow up on this premise by ensuring that our laws, policies and practices are in fact consistent with American values of due process and religious freedom.

These freedoms are too important to be violated, as evidenced by the willingness of people in my birthplace to risk their lives to secure them.

Azadeh Shahshahani is the National Security/Immigrants' Rights Project director for the ACLU of Georgia.