LOPEZ: Are we the persecutors, when, let’s say, we’re keeping Muslim prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay and force-feeding those on hunger strikes?

SHEA: No, Guantanamo Bay prisoners were captured on the battlefield, and they are not being held because they are Muslim. In fact, the U.S. provides Qurans and respects prayers and Ramadan fast restrictions for such prisoners.

SHEA: Of the 15 republics that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have religious freedom. The rest have varying degrees of religious repression, with the Central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan ranking among the world’s worst persecutors. Russia itself, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan are assessed as severe religious-freedom violators. Belarus is recognized to violate religious freedom but not as severely as those others, according to USCIRF assessments. Typically in these countries today, the Orthodox Church is favored, while other churches and religions are severely restricted or repressed.
 

LOPEZ: Was Belarus better off under the Soviet Union?

SHEA: No. Soviet bloodshed against religious believers and the destruction of their churches was egregious and systematic. Belarus is considered to be the most religiously repressive country on the European continent today, but it achieves this through a web of regulations and restrictive laws regarding which churches can be built, what literature can be read, and who can preach. It is restrictive, but it is not designated among the world’s worst persecutors, as a “Country of Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act, by either the State Department or the independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
 

LOPEZ: What do you hope people learn from your book?

SHEA: Today, religious persecution is acute and among the world’s most massive human-rights crises. And it is often ignored, by the secular media, political leaders, even religious leaders. Christians who suffer for their religious faith should not do so in obscurity in today’s global world but should be known, especially within Western churches, which still tend to speak of religious persecution as something that only happened in past centuries. Pakistan’s Shahbaz Bhatti, who was gunned down in 2011 for his life’s work of defending persecuted Christians and other religious minorities in his home country; Pastor Saeed Abedini, currently imprisoned in Iran for supporting Christian communities there; Asia Bibi, a mother on Pakistan’s death row for “blasphemy”; Bishop Ma, in detention for the last year in China for denouncing government control over the churches — they should be household names in the West. Their heroic examples are inspirational. Their stories should remind all our citizens how critically important religious freedom is, how central it is to our other freedoms, and how it needs to be defended.

My coauthors, Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert, and I also hope that our readers will use their rights as citizens to press their own governments to champion religious freedom in foreign policy. Lives could be saved, prisoners could be freed, if only our leaders felt pressure to speak up. It’s shameful that in 2010, while the U.S. had over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and we supported President Karzai’s government in every possible way, the last remaining church in Kabul saw its 99-year lease cancelled and was shut down. Now our diplomats and contractors, in order to worship in community as Christians there, must do so secretly, like in Saudi Arabia, the only other country without a single church. The U.S. State Department knew about this church closure and reported on it, but failed to speak up. This betrays our fundamental ideals as a nation. It says we care about trade and security, but not about the most fundamental rights we claim to cherish. By contrast, a decade ago, the Christians and African traditional believers of southern Sudan were facing genocidal religious persecution. As a direct result of deft and persistent diplomacy, led by the United States, that violence was stopped. The State Department now reports that in South Sudan, religious freedom is upheld in law and practice. This great diplomatic achievement came about through grassroots pressure, mainly from American churches.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor at large of National Review Online.