On October 29, Donald J. Trump posted:
To the Coptic Christian community living throughout the United States, I deeply admire your Steadfast Faith in God, Perseverance through Centuries of Persecution and Love for this Great Country. I am Counting on your support and vote to help uphold our shared Social and Family Values and continue to Make America Great Again!
Ironically, this message coincides with my rereading of Adel Guindy’s excellent book, A Sword Over the Nile. Based on previously unknown or untranslated primary sources, page after page wholly validates Trump’s assertion that the Copts have experienced “centuries of persecution.”
At any rate, Trump’s message to the Copts is a reminder that he is the only president in modern times — certainly when compared to his predecessor and successor — who actually acknowledges the plight of Christians under Islam.
Doing Something About It
For example, in 2020, while still president, Trump issued a statement noting the “ongoing challenges facing the largest Christian group [Copts] in the Middle East,” adding that it is “time for us to acknowledge the importance of religious freedom and reaffirm our commitment to promoting and defending this core tenet of a free society. Tragically, far too many people the world over face persecution on account of their faith.”
That same year, Trump said in an interview that the treatment of Christians in the Mideast is “beyond disgraceful,” that Christianity is being “treated horribly and very unfairly, and it’s criminal.”
During a 2019 UN speech, Trump also called on world leaders “to take action to put an end to all attacks by state and non‑state actors against citizens for simply worshipping according to their beliefs… No one should fear for their safety in a house of worship anywhere in the world.”
This, of course, was a reference to the nonstop attacks on churches, which take place constantly in Egypt both at the hands of the state actors who regularly ban churches and the non-state actors who regularly burn and bomb them. Just last week, a group of Copts had to hold a funeral in the street alleys because the authorities had sealed off access to their church since 2006.
Most notably, in May 2017, after Islamic gunmen massacred 28 Coptic Christians — ten of whom were children — while they were traveling home after visiting a monastery, Trump said:
This merciless slaughter of Christians in Egypt tears at our hearts and grieves our souls… America makes clear to its friends, allies, and partners that the treasured and historic Christian communities of the Middle East must be defended and protected. The bloodletting of Christians must end, and all who aid their killers must be punished.
The Evil of Omission
Now compare Trump’s position concerning persecuted Christians with those of Obama and Biden.
At the height of the worst state-sanctioned terrorist attack on Egypt’s Christians in modern history — the 2011 Maspero Massacre, when the government shot at and ran over with tanks dozens of Copts for daring to protest the burnings and closures of their churches — Obama issued “a pointedly even-handed statement that calls equally on Christians and the military to show restraint.” (Because, you know, Egypt’s beleaguered Christian minorities needed to “restrain” themselves against the tanks running them over and the soldiers’ rifles shooting them in the head.)
This, of course, was par for the course: For Obama and his ilk, Christians can never be “persecuted.” That would run completely afoul of their Marxist ideology, which sees Christians unequivocally as “oppressors” in every circumstance.
Thus, when Muslims bombed three churches in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday in 2019, killing some 300 Christians, Obama and Hilary Clinton could not even bring themselves to identify the slain victims as “Christians” — the way they most certainly would had the perpetrators been Christian and the victims Muslim. Instead, they condemned a “terror” attack on “Easter worshippers.”
In fact, not only did Obama fail to acknowledge (much less do anything about) the Muslim persecution of Christians, he aided and abetted it (see here, here, here, here). ISIS, which committed heinous atrocities against Christians and other non-Muslim minorities, was something of Obama’s “parting gift” to the world, as they rose to power in the final years of his tenure. Conversely, ISIS was eliminated under Trump.
A Glorious Interlude
But it is perhaps in the context of Nigeria, where a bona fide genocide of Christians has been taking place since Obama first entered the White House that the differences between Obama and Biden, on the one hand and Trump on the other emerge most clearly. On average, a Nigerian Christian is martyred every two hours, and that has been the case since Obama entered the White House.
Although jihadists slaughtered and terrorized Nigeria’s Christians all during Obama’s eight-year tenure, and although the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom had, beginning in 2009 and every year afterwards, repeatedly urged the State Department to designate it as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC — a reference to nations that “engage in, or tolerate violations of, religious freedom”) the Obama administration refused.
Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department went so far as to refuse to merely designate Boko Haram as a “terrorist” organization—even though it is a notorious jihadist group that has slaughtered more Christians and bombed more churches than the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria combined.
It was only in 2020, under the Trump administration, that Nigeria was finally designated as a CPC. Moreover, with characteristic bluntness, Trump forthrightly asked Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari — whom many Nigerian officials say Obama helped bring to power — “Why are you killing Christians?”
Back to Business
But once Biden/Harris got into office, it was business as usual: the State Department, under Antony Blinken, went out of its way to remove Nigeria from the CPC list.
At the time, many observers responded by slamming the Biden administration. As one human rights lawyer noted:
Outcry over the State Department’s removal of Country of Particular Concern status for Nigeria’s religious freedom violations is entirely warranted. No explanations have been given that could justify this decision. If anything, the situation in Nigeria has grown worse over the last year. Thousands of Christians … are targeted, killed, and kidnapped, and the government is simply unwilling to stop these atrocities…. Removing Country of Particular Concern status for Nigeria will only embolden the increasingly authoritarian government there.
And so, as election day draws nigh, here is one more difference to note between Trump and Harris: Trump has a record of speaking up for and acknowledging the persecution of Christians, whereas Harris — who just mockingly denounced the claim that “Jesus is Lord” — will most surely further the Obama-Biden legacy.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.