SoCal Theologica: Musings from the West Coast

Persecution Blog

There is a lot of commentary on the President’s speech and here is a very interesting article, from the Assyrian International News Agency, and also posted at National Review online.

Nina Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. She talked to National Review Online’s Kathryn Lopez about President Obama’s Mideast trip and Thursday speech in Egypt.  Click here to read the full interview.  Here’s a snip…

LOPEZ: Is Egypt worse than other countries in its region when it comes to religious freedom?

SHEA: Egypt has the largest non-Muslim population in the Muslim Middle East — between 6 and 10 million Christian Copts — and because religious freedom is restricted, as well as other human rights, many problems arise: the arrest and torture of those who convert to Christianity; the suppression of building or even restoring Coptic churches; the denial of justice to Copts attacked and robbed by Muslims; the exclusion of Copts from many governmental positions; rampant anti-Semitism in the state media; the harassment of the Muslim Koranist group and the denial of Baha’is right to acknowledge their faith; and the punishment of perceived blasphemers and apostates from Islam, among other issues. Egypt also is in the lead of the effort to universalize Islamic blasphemy laws through the U.N. It has given rise to terrorists like Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy of al-Qaeda. It is on the “Watch List” of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent government agency on which I serve as a commissioner.