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Rabat – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group based in Washington, raised alarms last week over a grant program run by the US State Department, arguing that it would use taxpayer funds “to promote atheism in Muslim-majority regions of Asia and the Middle East.”
According to the “Notice of Funding Opportunity” (NOFO) by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), the program targets organizations with projects that support “Religious Freedom globally” in order to combat discrimination against atheists.
The program also aims “to ensure that everyone enjoys religious freedom, including the freedom to dissent from religious belief and to not practice or adhere to a religion.”
The NOFO indicates that the grant would be allocated to build and strengthen “networks of advocates for the diverse communities of atheist, humanist, non-practicing and non-affiliated individuals of all religious communities in target countries.”
According to the project description, the program’s activities will occur in two or three countries selected within South/Central Asia or the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The program will award grants up to $500,000.
Criticizing the program, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s National Deputy Director, said: “Just as it would be inappropriate for the State Department to directly fund the spread of religion in secular societies, it is inappropriate for the Department to directly fund the spread of atheism in religious societies.”
Mitchell added that the United States should launch initiatives “to promote freedom and justice” for all people across the world, instead of advancing “anti-theist movements.”
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CAIR is concerned that the grant program may add to some people’s suspicions that the US government seeks to secularize the Muslim world by funding “foreign organizations and governments hostile to Islam.”
Mitchell stressed people’s right to religious freedom, arguing that the United States should not “pour money into foreign countries in an effort to specifically favor non-religion over religion, or vice versa.”
In a letter to US president Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the House Republican Conference (GOP) party also expressed their “grave concern” over the grant program, writing that the Department of State “is using appropriated funds to support atheism and radical, progressive orthodoxy across the world.”
“This is not ‘religious freedom’,” the letter reads, accusing the NOFO of prioritizing atheists and humanists above “all other potential recipients” and violating “both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses” as well as “the No Religious Test Clause of Article VI” of the Constitution.
The GOP also argued that the grant program does not serve the best interest of the US foreign policy, as it might be viewed as an attempt by “a foreign power designed to shatter local religious and cultural relationships.”
