Two major reports released last week convey the gravity and urgency of worldwide anti-Christian persecution, particularly in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
The first report, which the U.S. State Department published Wednesday, declares terrorism the greatest threat to Christian and other religious minorities worldwide. The rise of nonstate terrorist organizations like ISIS and Boko Haram has made Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere the targets of kidnapping, rape, slavery, murder and other atrocities.
“[N]on-state actors, including rebel and terrorist organizations, … committed by far some of the most egregious human rights abuses and caused significant damage to the global status of respect for religious freedom,” says the International Religious Freedom Report.
The second report, presented Tuesday by U.K. charity Aid to the Church in Need and backed by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, claims Christianity could be extinct in Iraq within five years and is at serious risk in other parts of the world, as well.
“Christians are fast disappearing from entire regions – most notably a huge chunk of the Middle East but also whole dioceses in Africa. In large part, this migration is the product of an ethnic cleansing motivated by religious hatred,” according to the U.K. charity’s report, called Persecuted and Forgotten?
To read the full reports, click the links below.
Aid to the Church in Need – Persecuted and Forgotten? »
U.S. State Department – International Religious Freedom Report for 2014 »
