Published: 20 February 2013
Details about a long-awaited Office of Religious Freedom, and the person who will lead it, [were announced yesterday] by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. 鈥� Arvind Sharma, who teaches comparative religion at McGill, told CBC that one of the reasons Christian faiths are the most persecuted is because they are also the most proselytizing in many parts of the world. 鈥淐onversion can mean two things when related to religious freedom鈥�, he said. 鈥淢y right to change my religion and somebody else鈥檚 right to ask me to change my religion. The person who is trying to convert somebody may use deception, may use threat, may use temptation and so on.鈥� However, Sharma also said, 鈥淚 see a great opportunity because the office is being set up in Canada and Canada is a self-consciously multi-cultural society, so it has this great opportunity to define religious freedom in a way which is inclusive, which takes the views of all the religions in the world into this view and not just the missionary religions.鈥�