Nina Shea joins President Donald Trump and religious leaders in the Oval Office for the signing ceremony for H.R. 390, the Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act of 2018

While China inters nearly one million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps, Bibles rigged with explosives have awaited Syrian Christians returning to villages demolished by ISIS.

In the face of these ongoing atrocities, Hudson Institute experts joined the State Department for the Ministerial on Advancing Religious Freedom this past week to explore how religious tolerance can be extended in U.S. foreign policy. At the Ministerial, Nina Shea, the Director of Hudson's Center for Religious Freedom, joined Sudanese survivors and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy for a session on sub-Saharan Africa. At sideline events, Hudson's Paul Marshall discussed religious extremism and Nina Shea examined how Christian holy sites can be preserved in the Middle East.

As a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, religious freedom is a research priority for Hudson experts. Below, find selected analyses drawn from Hudson's Center for Religious Freedom, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology journal, and regional scholars.

Tracking Today's Religious Intolerance

A glance at some of the most pressing instances of religious persecution around the world:

Europe's Ubiquitous Anti-Semitism by Ben Judah, The Atlantic

Anti-Semitism, I kept thinking, is just not that important. I kept thinking that even after I was pinned to a wall, throttled, and punched in the head by [British Politician George] Galloway supporters in 2015 shouting, “Get out, you f***ing Jew.” [In Britain and Europe,] something that should have nothing to do with the Jews—a parliamentary split, or a protest movement sparked by fuel prices—was now all about the Jews.​

The Anti-Islamic Movement in China by Haiyun Ma, contributor to Current Trends in Islamist Ideology

Throughout China’s imperial history, the term “Hui” was used at different times to derogate the adherents of monotheistic faiths like Islam, Judaism, and even Christianity. In recent times, the spread of the Internet and social media in China has contributed to a marked popular resurgence of anti-Muslim sentiment, actions and policies. The rise of the anti-Islam movement in China needs to be understood in the context of the Communist Party’s decades-long failure to assimilate non-Han populations.

Scapegoats of Wrath, Subjects of Benevolence: Turkey’s Minorities Under Erdoğan by Aykan Erdemir, contributor to Current Trends in Islamist Ideology

At the policy level, Recep Tayyip​ Erdoğan has overseen the most ambitious restitution process for non-Muslim minority foundations in the history of the Turkish Republic. At the same time he has also made damaging attempts to block those same foundations from holding elections for their boards, thereby bringing these institutions to the brink of extinction.​

Iran's Furtive Occupation of Iraq's Christian Communities by Lela Gilbert, The Jerusalem Post

The major Christian towns of Qaraqosh, Bartella and Karamles are now supposedly under the control of the Iraqi army, but the military force that is actually occupying them, locally called Shabak, is an Iran-funded Shia militia. In fact, it is widely rumored that it is under the command of Iran’s Quds extraterritorial force and its infamous general, Qasem Soleimani.​

Is The West Finally Pushing Saudi Arabia to Squelch its Version of Radical Islam​ by Nina Shea, Fox News

Since 2005, I have directed the gathering and translations of religious educational texts published by the Saudi Arabian government. As I told Congress in testimony 16 years after the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks still teach an ideology of hatred and violence against many groups, including: Jews, Christians, non-Wahhabist Muslims (Shiites, Sufis and Ahmadis), Hindus, Bahais, Yazidis, animists, and “infidels" of all stripes, as well as other groups with different beliefs.​

The above text has been edited and condensed for clarity

Go Deeper: Hudson Scholars' Publications on Religious Freedom

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