Today marks the anniversary of the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Act, yet from Nigeria to China, Syria to the DRC, Indonesia to Vietnam, Iran to Iraq, and even here in the United States, religious freedom remains under assault.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a statement affirming the Trump administration’s “commitment to championing the unalienable right of religious freedom.” But unfortunately, around the world, religious persecution — particularly of Jews and Christians — is on the rise and increasingly deadly.
Indeed, Rubio acknowledged as much in his statement today. “Hundreds of millions of people of faith around the world face threats of violence, imprisonment, and death for simply living out their faith,” he wrote. “Religious persecution destabilizes countries, undermines hope for peace, and attacks a core truth recognized by our Founding Fathers: that faith is essential to human flourishing and a free society. America’s foreign policy unapologetically promotes religious freedom as a universal human right and a fundamental freedom, a right given to us by our Creator.”
Rubio added, “There is no greater friend to religious freedom than the United States, and we will continue to lead with strength to protect religious liberty around the world.”
But unfortunately, even the current U.S. administration has made deals favorable to anti-religious freedom entities, most particularly the terrorist group HTS, which is currently running Syria while massacring Druze and Christians, and the terror-funding Palestinian Authority which rewards genocide against Jews and oppresses Christians.
Syrian Christians and Druze gather in Sweida to mourn the genocide of 4,000 Druze and Christians by government Islamists.
Non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East feel abandoned and don’t understand why human rights activists in the West only care about Palestinians who always… pic.twitter.com/azTjNEaRo3
— Dr. Maalouf (@realMaalouf) October 23, 2025
Numerous other governments, particularly Muslim and Communist regimes, also harass, persecute, jail, and even murder Christians. Nigeria is the deadliest country for Christians, with over 60,000 killed in more than a decade of genocidal terrorism, fueled by Islam. In fact, Nigerian clerics just appealed to the U.S. government after a series of deadly attacks this month.
Kenya, Sudan, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are other African nations plagued with anti-Christian jihad. The Chinese Communist Party harshly targets, arrests, and kills Christians, Uyghur Muslims, and other religious minorities, including Falun Gong. Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, South Africa, Thailand, and Indonesia persecute Christians. In Pakistan and India, Christians are oppressed, and India and Bangladesh see regular clashes between Hindus and Muslims.
And, of course, ever since Hamas’s October 7 atrocities in 2023, there has been a global wave of antisemitic violence and activism in many countries both West and East, even in “democratic” nations, from Spain to the Netherlands to the UK to Australia to the USA.
If we are to uphold religious freedom, we cannot simply do so in words, but also in actions.
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