Spectator |Marlo Safi | Dec. 2, 2019
Following Donald Trump’s election, there was hope that the US would aid Christian communities overseas, especially in Iraq where the population of Christians was reduced by over 80 percent since the US invasion. The Obama administration was less receptive to a focus on persecuted Christians, often opting to use euphemistic terms. Christian persecution became known more as a series of sporadic, unrelated incidents rather than a phenomena. The US has invested significantly in helping rebuild Iraq, but the effectiveness of our aid has been limited, and some people on the ground in Iraq claim they never saw the entirety of the aid themselves.
African Christians and Middle Eastern Christians face daily torment and oppression for their faith, and in some countries such as Iraq and Syria, genocide-level persecution that threatens the existence of their communities in the Holy Land itself, where the faith blossomed. The recognition of these religious minorities’ strife has been a point of contention, and western leaders often are stifled by the gag of political correctness.
In Burkina Faso on Sunday, Islamic extremists killed 14 people in an attack on a church. The attack in this small African country is not an aberration; African Christians are facing record-high violence for their Christian faith. In Nigeria, Boko Haram went door-to-door in a Christian village in 2019, killing 25. In Eritrea, some Christians meet in secret following a law that passed shutting down many churches.