Be tolerant of minorities:Hillary to Islamic nations

"On the question of persecution, obviously, what we`re seeing is deeply distressing. It`s not only against Christians or against Hindus; it`s also against different sects of Muslims. I mean, there are Islamic sects in Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere that are also discriminated against, persecuted and their adherents brutally treated," Clinton told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

One of the biggest problems in the world right now is that there needs to be a greater acceptance of religious tolerance. In so many places, there is no history of religious tolerance. And there is a need to search an effective way to solve this, she said in reply to a question.

"One of the things that we tried very hard to do is to work with a number of countries, including Muslim-majority countries, the Organisation of Islamic Conference, to begin to change the dialogue from something they wanted to call religious defamation.”

"This would be a legal rationale for persecuting people who spoke out about their own religion or criticized someone else`s, to a broad acceptance that there needs to be an equation between freedom of speech and freedom of religion," Clinton said.