As war again engulfs parts of the Middle East and tensions spiral around Iran, the international community confronts a familiar and tragic pattern. Whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, or under Tehran's theocratic regime, religion has too often been manipulated as an instrument of political power. For Americans watching events unfold with alarm, the question is not simply how to respond militarily or diplomatically. It is how to address one of the structural drivers of these recurring crises, the political abuse of religion.
The United States was founded on a revolutionary idea: that faith must be protected from the state, and the state protected from domination by any single faith. The First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom remains one of America's greatest contributions to constitutional thought. Yet across much of the world, religion and political authority remain fused in ways that institutionalize inequality, suppress dissent, and sanctify repression.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Iran. Since the 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, clerical supremacy has been embedded in the machinery of the state. The doctrine of velayat-e faqih, rule by the Islamic jurist, grants unelected religious authorities ultimate political control. The result has been decades of repression, systemic discrimination against women and minorities, and the export of sectarian militancy. The current confrontation involving Iran and its proxies is not an isolated eruption of violence. It flows from a system in which political power claims divine mandate. When governments cloak themselves in sacred legitimacy, compromise becomes betrayal and dissent becomes heresy. Conflict is no longer merely political; it becomes existential.
Iran is not alone. ISIS exploited religious narratives to justify barbarism. In Gaza, Hamas fuses religious absolutism with armed struggle. Across the region, minorities, including Christians, Yazidis, and Baha'is, have suffered under systems that entrench discrimination in the name of faith.
Religion itself is not the problem. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other faith traditions carry profound messages of compassion and human dignity. For billions, faith is a source of moral guidance. The danger arises when political actors, regimes, or insurgent movements weaponize religion to entrench power and legitimize coercion.
In the United States, the separation of church and state has not excluded religion from public life, nor should it. Faith communities enrich civil society. But the American model draws a crucial line. Protecting freedom of religion does not permit its exploitation to undermine equal protection under the law. This distinction is urgently needed internationally. While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms freedom of religion or belief, it offers little clarity when regimes manipulate religion as a governing doctrine. The world reacts after crises erupt, with sanctions or force, but rarely addresses the structural abuse that fuels instability.
That is why a United Nations treaty prohibiting the political abuse of religion deserves serious consideration. Such an initiative would not target any faith or nation, nor seek to expel religion from public life. It would establish clear global standards. No state should invoke religion to deny equal protection. No government should condition political participation on adherence to a creed. No authority should claim sacred legitimacy to silence dissent.
For Americans, this is not radical. It echoes the constitutional framework that has safeguarded pluralism for nearly 250 years. At a time when Iran's leadership cloaks geopolitical ambition in religious rhetoric, articulating such standards would send a powerful message. Skeptics will argue that treaties are toothless. Yet history shows that clear international norms shape diplomatic pressure, inform sanctions, guide asylum claims, and empower reformers. Normative clarity influences alliances, trade, and reputational standing.
In Iran's case, a treaty banning the political abuse of religion would sharpen the moral and legal case against a system that fuses theology with authoritarian rule. It would strengthen those who seek a civic state grounded in equal citizenship rather than clerical supremacy. More broadly, such an effort would promote preventive diplomacy. By confronting a recurring driver of sectarian conflict, it could protect minorities, reinforce equality before the law, and help ensure that religion remains a source of moral guidance rather than political division. The choice before the international community is not between religion and secularism. It is between integrity and exploitation, between governments that respect human dignity and those that manipulate the sacred to entrench power.
As the Middle East stands on a knife-edge, the United States can lead not only with strength, but with clarity. By championing a global prohibition on the political abuse of religion, Washington would reaffirm a principle embedded in its own constitutional DNA; faith flourishes best when free from political coercion, and government derives legitimacy from the consent of the governed, not from claims of divine mandate. If we are serious about preventing future wars, we must confront not only the weapons on the battlefield, but the ideologies that sanctify their use.
Struan Stevenson was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14), and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East and a trustee of BPUR International – a global mission to ban the political abuse of religion.