Religious Minority

Christian persecution is as real today as it’s ever been. Our brothers and sisters suffering it need protection and rescue. They also need prayer. The International Day of Prayer is meant to give that to them.

While the Daesh genocide perpetrated against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities is an extreme example of religious persecution, it sheds light on the perils religious minorities have been encountering more generally in the Middle East.

Speaking to leaders of 55 Muslim-majority countries, President Trump gave the speech an American president has needed to give but perhaps only Trump would have felt comfortable delivering.

Despite repeated assurances from President Sisi to protect the country’s large Coptic minority, his government appears unwilling or unable to actually deliver on his promises.

It took me a moment to comprehend. I opened my cell phone to check the news and saw the bold headline: 25 dead and 49 injured in an attack on the Coptic Orthodox cathedral. The spiritual center of Egyptian Christianity had been mercilessly violated.

Gerard Russell’s Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms shows how Islam is not the only religion in the Middle East while displaying the hidden life of centuries old religious communities.