Thank you, Mr. Anderson, for your question.
First of all, of course it's important that Canada built a freedom of religion office here with the leadership of Dr. Andrew Bennett. It's a great step not just on Canadian soil but even internationally. However, I think one of the main issues we have to deal with when this comes to the situation in Iraq is education. I really believe this is part of the problem that we are facing right now.
When the Arab Spring started...and we indicated previously that the Arab Spring has turned out to be a cold, deadly winter for the minorities. Allow me to express that we are all against dictatorships—Mubarak in Egypt, or Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, or Gaddafi in Libya, and so on—but the problem when you take a dictatorship out is that you create a political vacuum. The ones using this political vacuum are the Muslim extremists and that's what we saw happening in many countries—Libya and Egypt, and so on.
If we speak about the Egyptian society, for example, we find that 30% to 40% of the Egyptian society is illiterate. They don't know how to read and write their own name. Even if we reform the constitution they don't know what they are voting on. They will follow somebody with a beard who says, “You know, you'll go to Heaven if you follow me.” That's where the office of freedom of religion comes in, by promoting freedom of religion. There will never be a true democracy in the Middle East without establishing two foundations: number one is the freedom of religion; number two is the separation between the religion and the state. There will never be a democracy in the Middle East without the separation between the religion and the state.
I find that the office of freedom of religion here in Canada and abroad can be a strong instrument when it comes to education, when it comes to the next generation, when it comes to putting in place dedication to separating between the religion and the state, and establishing true freedom of religion using our aid as an encouragement tool.
Thank you.