Who defends Christians?

By: Ricardo Israel - 05/10/2025

It's strange, but while it's the most populous faith, it's also the most persecuted. One of the worst countries is Nigeria. According to Open Doors, in 2023, no fewer than 8,222 Christians were murdered there for their faith, and in the first 220 days of 2025, more than 7,000 suffered that fate. Jihadist violence is increasing rather than decreasing, with groups like Boko Haram and Fulani attacking defenseless Christian communities, with massacres as extreme as burning them alive in their own churches.

In Asia, Pakistan is ranked number 7 on Open Doors' "World Watch List" in 2025. There, they face persecution and oppression, especially in the northern regions where Sharia law is applied, as well as problems such as forced marriages and sexual violence suffered by Christian women, in addition to numerous Christians and Hindus forcibly converted to Islam each year.

Not only in those countries, but millions of Christians suffer persecution and discrimination for their faith. The silence surrounding this situation is striking. A silence that is not only striking but also deafening, since it extends to a large part of the world's mainstream press, some of the most relevant, since it is rare to find their pages or images covering this issue for what it is: one of the worst human rights violations in the world.

Furthermore, where are the crowds marching in the streets or the human rights NGOs? Not only them, but there are almost no government resolutions or parliamentary debates. And to raise the decibels of hypocrisy, it doesn't appear in almost anything from the UN.

The 2024 World Watch List concludes that one in seven Christians on the planet lives in countries where the law does not adequately protect them from discrimination, and in Latin America, as is public knowledge, the Catholic Church in Nicaragua suffers persecution under the dictatorial Ortega-Murillo regime.

Available information shows that there are approximately 50,000 Christians in "re-education camps" in North Korea, that is, prisoners, including tourists convicted of trying to give away Bibles.

And Europe?

Not only is its indifference surprising, but its situation is also depressing, as it denies itself and the Christian tradition of its history. Without Christianity, including the Wars of Religion, neither Europe nor the conquest of America, accomplished not only by treasure but also by evangelization, can be explained. In other words, it is possible that without Christianity, the very concept of Europe would not exist, since in practice it is a creation of its own. It was once divided by the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, but ultimately it was the cement that held it together. However, hostility toward Christians does not seem to be significant today, neither in most national parliaments nor among MEPs.

In no case is this a process that began in our time; the memory of the Armenian Genocide, which began on April 24, 1915, and which Turkey has yet to recognize or ask for forgiveness, is sufficient. He also explains that when information emerged about mass graves of women and children tortured in the Syrian civil war, Antonio Chedraui Tannous, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Apostolic Church of Antioch, criticized an international community that "has turned a deaf ear and refused to listen," in his case, in reaction to the dissemination of images of crucified Orthodox Christians and the destruction of their churches.

The truth is that a situation where so many people do not want to know is worrying, since the attacks on Christians throughout the world and what is happening in Europe as a result of immigration that simply disregards the heritage and tradition that welcomes them, are not separate phenomena, but related, so the apathy of European leaders should be scandalous, although as a novelty, a reaction in defense of their history seems to have already begun, with a striking presence of young people in the public demonstrations that are taking place both in the Union and in the United Kingdom.

There is a lot of information about the persecution of Christians coming from places like the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (Massachusetts) and similar sources, but in this case, the data is validated by the Vatican itself. It does not refer to armed conflicts, but rather to acts, including acts of savagery, simply for their faith.

For this reason, since the Vatican is a forum of global impact, especially in matters of morality, the Pope's word is always important. It was therefore welcome and encouraging that Leo XIV recently addressed the situation in Nigeria. It is striking how weak the response of some of his predecessors has been when it comes to Catholics, given that Catholicism remains the largest religious institution in the world, far surpassing any other Christian church, as it also surpasses Sunni Islam. However, its response has been weak and unpredictable. Just as it has not reacted with due force to the situation in Lebanon, it did not do so in its time with the true religious cleansing of Christians in parts of North Africa, or more recently in Sudan, where for years there has been an attempt at the forced Islamization of black Christian tribes.

Perhaps this happened because, although local churches reacted as in Nicaragua, the Vatican is not only the place where the leader of Catholicism lives, but it is also a State that sometimes has reactions where political negotiation surpasses religion, as has occurred with the acceptance of the existence of two "Catholic" churches in communist China, one permitted and the other persecuted, sometimes clandestine, where Pope Francis remained silent even when Cardinal Joseph Zen was arrested in May 2022, a silence similar to the one he maintained towards the Castro-Chavista dictatorships in Latin America.

In any case, what must be made clear is that when we talk about Muslims or Islam, we are not talking about everyone, nor even the majority; it is not in general, but rather a particular sector, since the problem has always been and is with fundamentalism, with political Islam, whose first victims have traditionally been other Muslims, since it is not the religion itself, but an ideology of world domination, that jihad that seeks the universal caliphate.

This is a historical fact, since the expansion from the sands of Arabia brought them into conflict with the cultures they encountered along the way, sometimes as dominant, sometimes as dominated, sometimes as aggressor, sometimes as attacked, since this is not a story of "good" and "bad." It is such a mixed history that in countries like Syria and Egypt, sectors of the descendants of the original Christians (for example, the Copts in Egypt) have preferred to support dictators, out of fear caused by the Muslim Brotherhood or movements like the Islamic State, so much so that one of the few countries where they do not suffer persecution and are growing in number is Israel in the Middle East, which also helps to understand why it has more sympathy among evangelicals than in other pro-Western groups.

There was conflict not only with the Jews, but also with the Christians, including that invasion that was the Crusades, as there was also with the Hindus, or the Buddhists or the Confucian culture, sometimes resolved in the form of integration or sometimes, it resurfaces again and again, as confrontation.

For its part, what is happening today in Europe only serves as a reminder of the injustice committed in Italy and elsewhere against Oriana Fallaci, who was falsely accused of Islamophobia in court, simply for having pointed out what is happening today in plain sight. The loss of Christian tradition and values is a fact that, if it continues, will have all kinds of consequences, as everything points to a change of era, also fueled by an inevitable demographic shift, where Christians will become a minority and their cathedrals will become tourist attractions rather than places of worship, perhaps similar to what happened in Istanbul in past centuries.

From the outset, the change of era is already noticeable, not only to the eye of the tourist on the streets of any major city, but also in neighborhoods where the police do not enter, and where honor killings and the discourse about the imposition of Sharia over common law are evident. At the same time, the insecurity of the transition is evident even in attempts to suppress, not the problem itself, but its external manifestations, such as the ban on certain clothing, as has happened with burqas.

There has certainly been discrimination, neglect of peripheral neighborhoods, and lack of opportunities—all of this is true. But there is also a reality where European models of immigrant integration have not been as successful as in the United States. There are certainly racists in both places, although in no case is it systemic, as those in those countries who despise the Western heritage falsely accuse. And, on the contrary, countries like Saudi Arabia continue to make it difficult to establish churches or other places of Christian worship.

Part of the European problem is that multiculturalism has not yielded the expected results, in a context where the proposal for integration receives a response that does not believe in it, but rather repeats an official truth, such as that there is only one true religion. And where the paradox arises that those who have idealized this situation are the children and grandchildren born in Europe, of those who sought to integrate since they arrived fleeing repression and the suffocation of lack of freedom.

Today, their descendants were radicalized online to fight for the Islamic State in the Middle East a few years ago, and where nations that were built over centuries and were the driving force of colonialism, such as France, the United Kingdom, and Spain, today show a lack of will to confront a reality that has had effects similar to an invasion.

Not only them, but the problem is equally serious when looking at situations like that of Sweden, where there is also a resounding failure in integration, measured in situations of ethnic gangs and various crimes such as sexual assault, all aggravated by a kind of pact of silence in the media, which is also recorded in the United Kingdom.

There are many explanations, but none of them is a solution to the loss of an identity that was built over centuries, a "long history" that was part of a way of being that is now fading and could disappear. And if I mention some of those countries, it's because it pains me to observe what's happening. For example, I struggle to recognize countries that were very important in my life story, since what I am intellectually is also thanks to the five years I lived in England, where I completed my master's and doctorate degrees. I also struggle to recognize the Sweden I went to during those years to work to finance my British studies, and to which I later returned frequently to teach and give lectures. It's also the Spain where I earned my law degree and where, ultimately, I decided not to accept the opportunity offered to acquire that nationality without problems. My Sephardic relatives had to leave there in 1492 because they refused to convert. They ended up in the Ottoman Empire, where, in exchange for paying a special tax called dhimmies, they could practice their faith and receive protection. Two of my grandparents lived there until it became modern-day Turkey, from where they emigrated to Latin America, but always speaking Ladino and with a special love for the places they had been expelled from, like Castile.

It pains me to see that those countries to which I owe so much have ceased to be what they were, and that once again in the history of Europe, we see a Judeophobia unleashed and with enormous popular support, even in a situation as strange as that of Spain where there is anti-Semitism, but almost no Jews living there today, because I would not feel comfortable unlike how at home I felt in Barcelona (San Cugat del Valles) of those days of study.

Looking at Europe today, I think the United States would be wise to continue insisting on the importance of freedom of expression. Today, the solitary voice of the United States is equivalent to what Carter's was on the issue of human rights, which allowed my parents to receive residency and asylum after the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Europeans don't like it, but it's good for them to hear this uncomfortable truth, where the worst thing is that they are betraying themselves, as the cradle of the Enlightenment that created the very idea of the West beginning in the 18th century, confirming Europe's characteristic as a place where some of the best, but also some of the worst, in the world emerged.

What should the US do? Learn from Europe's experience, so as not to repeat the same mistakes, just as in the past, it learned to be an empire, but without repeating the European experience of owning colonies. Similarly, I believe it should never forget the most important thing of all: its identity, what it is, the fruit of the (blessed?) trilogy that made the US what it has been: first, that the heritage to which it owes itself is the preservation of the West, and that this is a torch more than a backpack; second, that its institutions are a Greco-Roman legacy, both its republican constitution and democracy; and third, that its philosophical foundation, its idea of the country, is Judeo-Christian.

Today, it must preserve the spirit of pride that a resigned Europe has been losing, continue to defend freedom of expression as the foundation of other freedoms, and avoid the deterioration that, with a few exceptions, plagues Europe. The United States must always remember how it was created and that faith should not be eradicated from the public sphere, as there is nothing more anti-American, more contrary to its origins, than that, especially after the assassination of Charles Kirk, whose activism in the form of preaching is reminiscent of what Martin Luther King Jr. did with biblical references on a different topic: racism.

Above all, it must not fall into the trap of a boiled frog, into which Europe has lulled itself without a timely reaction, since it has apparently lost the cultural war with those within who wish to destroy this magnificent heritage. The worst that could have happened has already happened, with the resurgence of historical anti-Semitism, where several countries seem to want to remember the 1930s.

Furthermore, react promptly. The problem of wanting to be what one is and not be attacked from outside must be openly discussed within its national security component. Perhaps what appears to be a defeat of the very idea of Europe began with what Oriana Fallaci experienced, which was the last attempt to incorporate Christianity as a constitutional cement. Former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing officially presented the proposed Constitution for the European Union on June 13, 2003. Despite having been signed by the heads of government, it was a failure, an unratified treaty, as it failed to meet the validation requirements, having been rejected in referendums held in France and the Netherlands, and thus the proposal failed to enter into force. For her part, Fallaci herself, who defined herself as "an atheist, but a Christian atheist," died on September 15, 2006.

Since that failure, Europe has failed to find its way around what unites them, and therefore can hardly define the effort it demands of its immigrants. Therefore, today it is a large market, a giant in history, but increasingly irrelevant strategically and militarily. Europe has no answers, perhaps because it hasn't asked the right questions; it's only playing the game of thrones, looking for culprits. I hope that doesn't happen, but if there is no reaction, the European project itself, lacking a compass, may end up disappearing just as the USSR did, swallowed up by the national question, to be succeeded by the 15 republics that constituted it, only as independent countries, and moreover in conflict with each other.

For Europe, this issue is serious, almost as serious as the inexplicable silence regarding the religious persecution of Christians around the world. The last time I wrote about this topic in INFOBAE, I concluded by asking: Why aren't there mass demonstrations in the streets? Where is the United Nations? Why aren't Christians themselves organizing to denounce this situation wherever they can? Why isn't there a more decisive stance from the Vatican? Above all, where have the mainstream media been on this issue?

I must admit that I need help, since I don't have answers to the questions I asked myself at that time.

@israelzipper

-Master's and PhD in Political Science (University of Essex), Bachelor of Law (University of Barcelona), Lawyer (University of Chile), former presidential candidate (Chile, 2013)

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