Re-visiting Religious Persecution ...

A few weeks ago, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life issued a report stating that a recent study showed that more than two out of three people around the world live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion. Now, a new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom goes even further naming more than two dozen countries engaging in what is classically described as religious persecution.

“The numbers are shocking,” the report says. “In Nigeria more than 12,000 people have been killed in a cycle of violence between Christians and Muslims stretching back more than a decade. The number of people convicted and sentenced for the killings: zero.” Not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria's ten years of religious violence, the report claims.

The U.S. Commission did praise Nigeria's government, saying that when an USCRIF team went to the African nation in March, it found officials attentive and even grateful for its concerns. And a "concern" it is for everyone ... because the nations named in this study are not limited to Africa! The report also lists Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, India, Iran, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka. Also mentioned are China's crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in the west of the country as well as imprisonment of Buddhists and Protestants in Vietnam. The report also criticizes the United States government itself for not doing enough to fight the problem.

The promotion of inter-religious dialogue is also a key tenet of the mission of the Missionaries of Africa. See www.missionariesofafrica.org/about/mission.html for more information.