SEVENTEEN years ago, when American officialdom started performing annual investigations of global religious freedom, most of the world was still living in a climate of liberal optimism. It was assumed that religous persecution, as practised by certain nasty governments, was an unpleasant holdover from the dark practices of yesteryear; with the passage of time, and with appropriate diplomatic pressure on rogue regimes from the leading Western democracies, freedom of belief should eventually be enjoyed just about everywhere.
In the latest encyclopedic survey of religious freedom by the State Department, issued this week, there is little trace of that utopian spirit. It documents terrible and in many cases worsening violations of basic freedoms in dozens of countries, and acknowledges that cruel governments are no longer the sole or even the most pressing problem. The "principal persecutors and preventers of religious tolerance and [free] practice", according to John Kerry, the secretary of state, are the kinds of forces which step into a vacuum when legitimate authority collapses: warlords, racketeers and terrorist groups which have sunk to new levels of nihilistic cruelty.
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