NEW YORK -- "In pre-surrender discussions of the postwar world, no principle, save the basic principle of democracy itself, was more frequently cited than that of religious freedom as essential to the establishment of a permanently peaceful world."
This sentence appears in "Religions in Japan," a report prepared by the Civilian Information and Education Section, General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, in 1948. Actually, two separate groups within the CI&E -- the Religions Division and the Religions Research Branch of the Analysis and Research Division -- jointly prepared it, indicating the importance of the subject.
I turned to "Religions in Japan" (published as a regular book by Tuttle in 1955) because of the intriguing spectacle under way in the Middle East. The United States, whose occupation of Iraq is ostensibly aimed at bringing democracy to that hapless country, resists the idea of the Shiite group getting into the political process and, ignoring the chaos brought on by the war, now demands a similar "regime change" in Iraq's neighbor, Iran. (The latest Washington Post-ABC poll says 56 percent of Americans approve of military action against the Islamic republic).