Nina Shea

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  Aug 29, 2013

  Egypt's New Draft Constitution Undermines Religious Freedom

  Undermining religious freedom, of course, is not a small matter, not a mere nuisance to a few outliers. In Egypt, Morsi's Islamist constitution helped provoke a popular uprising by a broad range of groups opposed to the state's forcible imposition of Islamism, which in turn led to the military overthrow of the government on July 3.

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  Aug 20, 2013

  Egypt's Christians Are Facing Jihad

  Violent aggression by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, including those sympathetic to al-Qaeda, continues to be directed at one of the world's oldest Christian communities, following the military's break up last week of Brotherhood sit-ins.

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  Aug 15, 2013

  Egypt's Christians: Prime Targets for Muslim Brotherhood Violence and U.S. Indifference

  Egypt's Copts and their churches are under siege as Islamists react to the military crackdown against pro-Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins.

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  Jul 11, 2013

  Copts Stand to Lose in Egypt Again

  No faction in Egypt had more to lose from the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamist rule than the 8 million or so Christian Coptic community, the Mideast's largest non-Muslim minority.

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  Jul 2, 2013

  The Shadow War Against Syria's Christians

  On June 23, Catholic Syrian priest Fr. François Murad was murdered in Idlib by rebel militias. How he was killed is not yet known and his superiors "vigorously deny" that he was a victim of beheading, as some news sources are claiming.

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  May 15, 2013

  The Martyrs of Otranto: Beheaded For Their Faith

  Pope Francis celebrated his first canonizations in the course of his Mass in St. Peter's Square last Sunday, giving the Catholic Church over 800 new saints. All but two (a Colombian nun and a Mexican nun) were the "martyrs of Otranto," who were beheaded for their faith after Turkish Muslims invaded their southern-Italian port city in 1480

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  Apr 15, 2013

  Egypt's Copts Need Protection: What's Morsi Waiting For?

  Last week in Egypt, Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II delivered an unprecedented condemnation of the escalating religious attacks there against Coptic Christians: "The church has been a national symbol for 2,000 years," he told a television interviewer.

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  Apr 3, 2013

  My Take: What Real Persecution Looks Like

  In September 2005, a middle-aged woman was taken by state security officials from her home in North Korea's North Pyongan Province. She was put under arrest and taken to a local farm, where government officials had assembled in the threshing area to carry out her punishment.

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  Mar 13, 2013

  Persecution and the Pope

  Pope Francis I should be a strong defender of persecuted religious believers of all faiths. The world is in dire need of such leadership.

• Feb 19, 2013

  Tanzania Too: Christians Threatened with Islamist Violence on Easter

  Tanzania is the latest in a growing number of African countries to be struggling with escalating Islamist terror. In this country of 45 million people, over 60 percent of whom are Christian, church leaders are the canaries in the coalmine. On Sunday, 55-year-old Catholic priest Father Evarist Mushi was shot dead by assailants on a motorcycle in front of Zanzibar's St. Joseph's Cathedral just before Sunday morning Mass. According to the Pontifical news agency Fides, local bishops and priests rece