recompiling freetype
 

How to recompile freetype with bytecode interpreter enabled?
Is there a howto or already compiled rpm?

download the source code and then take a look at the documentation. First read the README in there and it will point you in the right direction. You might also have to change the prefix depending on where redhat installs things (if libfreetype.so.6 is in /usr/local/lib, then you're fine).

But there's probably an rpm package somewhere.