The Plight of Christians in Africa and the Middle East
One of my dearest friends is a pastor. He was my guidance counselor in 8th grade before leaving to pursue ministry work full-time and, during one of the most difficult times of my life, was undoubtedly the first person I ever felt safe with. He was my first impression of a true Christian; one who loves each individual for who they are, cares for humanity, and walks with God closely. He is a loving husband and father and an exceptional human being. Shortly after meeting him, I was placed in a Christian foster home. That was the first place that I remember really feeling loved. While not a Christian myself, my love for this particular community is boundless.
That is why it is imperative to discuss and understand the persecution Christians endure throughout Africa and the Middle East. It is unforgivable that the world, even Christians in the Americas and Europe, continue to look away from the unimaginable horrors taking place in these regions where Christians are dying solely because of their faith. If even one person reads this and comes away with a better understanding, I have done my job. This essay is dedicated to every Christian who has lost his or her life because of religious violence.
A Brief History of Christianity
Christianity was birthed in modern-day Israel during the Roman occupation of Judea, then a province of the empire. According to Christian theology and scripture, the founder of Christianity, Jesus (also known as Jesus Christ), was an influential teacher who conflicted with Jewish religious authorities and whose ministry opposed ideals upheld by the Roman occupation, culminating in a political execution by Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judea. During his life, Jesus amassed a small following composed of Jewish disciples who became the first Christians and spread the gospel. Paul, a later follower of Jesus, became famous for his epistles and extensive travels throughout the eastern Mediterranean. His journeys contributed to the establishment of several early Christian communities, including Rome itself, the very heart of the empire.
Many other apostles and missionaries traveled across neighboring regions over the next three centuries, often facing hostility and even being put to death as martyrs. Indeed, it was during Christianity’s early history, too, when Christian activity sometimes came at a heavy price in some places, though not everywhere was tumultuous, and many people welcomed and accepted these teachings. It wasn’t until the 4th century C.E. that Christianity became the status quo over time, when the Emperor Constantine (along with Licinius) issued the Edict of Milan. He also organized the Council of Nicaea, which adopted the Nicene Creed. During these events, Christianity was a tolerated religion and the following emperor, Theodosius I, established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. As Rome became Christianized, the new imperial capital was instituted in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey). What was at first a minor Jewish movement overshadowed by paganism became the dominant religious order in the world’s greatest superpower at that time.
In the earliest parts of Christianity’s history, communities in Jerusalem, Antioch and Ephesus (Turkey), Alexandria (Egypt), and Rome were well-established. So influential was the community in Egypt that it established its own theological diversity, became the birthplace of Christian monasticism, and developed the Coptic Orthodox Church. Corinth, Carthage, and other cities across Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia lying along the North African Mediterranean held important developments in early Christianity, as did Ethiopia and Armenia, the latter of which became the first Christian country. Christianity also found its way to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Persia (modern-day Iran). Evidently, Christianity flourished in Northern Africa and the Middle East. Today, Christianity is the predominant faith in North and South America and Europe. So where does it stand in its first home today?
To answer that question, we have to look at the seventh century. As Christianity spread and evolved since the time of its founding, another power rose and conquered the region: Islam. With its advent contrived from the teachings of the warlord Muhammad, it quickly overwhelmed the Middle East and North Africa. The Islamic empire, which was held together by a series of caliphates, laid siege to Carthage, the Iberian Peninsula, Egypt, Israel (then called Palestine, named by the Romans), Syria, and practically the whole region. Under the thumb of the Muslims, Christians (as well as Jews) were given recognition as dhimmis — non-Muslims under a special protection, granted only when paid a tax called jizya (remember these terms; they’ll be important later). If not put to death, forced to convert to Islam, or expelled, Christians who wished to remain where they were, as they were, had no choice but to pay; all the while facing restrictions in religious and public life. It can hardly be said that these protections were actually protecting anyone, but they minimized their chances of death by the sword.
Today, the number of Christians in Africa and the Middle East has dwindled due to ongoing violence, religious persecution, and systemic discrimination. Thousands of Christians live in fear and risk death just by existing. Open Doors, an advocacy institution for persecuted Christians, issued an eye-opening report on the state of Christian persecution in 2026. For example, of the recorded 4,849 Christian deaths around the world, 3,490 of them happened in Nigeria alone. That’s just under three-fourths of the entire number of deaths recorded. This is not the only concern.
The Hudson Institute has reported that the “U.S. State Department estimates the number of Christians in Iraq has reportedly fallen from 1.2 million in 2011 to 120,000 in 2024, and the number in Syria from 1.5 million to 300,000”. That is a 90% decline in Iraq and 80% decline in Syria. Evidently, Christians in these regions are nearly extinct. Open Doors states that 388 million Christians around the world “face high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith”. 315 million of this demographic comes from its Top 50 World Watch List. I have selected to focus on three specific countries from each of these two regions, although the gravity of the situation is the same no matter the place.
Africa
Nigeria
Nigeria is home to over 100 million Christians who make up a little under half of the total population. Nigeria ranks at number 7 on Open Doors’ 50-nation watch list “where Christians face the most extreme persecution”. Nigerian Christians are subject to relentless atrocities committed by groups like Boko Haram, ISWAP (Islamic State West African Province; ISIS of Africa), and Fulani militants who carry out more violence than the former two groups combined. There are a handful of others, and “mobs of citizens, political parties, and organized crime networks” have been known to target Christians.
Violence against Christians in Nigeria consists of mass killings and rape in addition to the destruction of churches and damage to infrastructure and agricultural areas. One particularly heinous tactic is the “abduction industry” in which “families have members kidnapped and are forced to pay huge ransoms to get them back”. Religious leaders also fall victim to these crimes and their respective communities go broke trying to raise the money to pay the ransom.
Christian women and girls in Nigeria are highly vulnerable and are often raped and turned into sex slaves; this is in addition to the aforementioned human rights violations. Christian men and boys frequently endure the trauma of witnessing the “violence against their wives and daughters” as well as “systemic discrimination in education, employment, and business”.
Egypt
Egypt boasts one of the first Christian communities to be established. Christian tradition attributes the founding of the Church of Alexandria to Saint Mark in the first century C.E. For 600 years, Egyptian Christians — the Copts/Coptics — constituted the majority of the population; that is until Islamic forces conquered Egypt under the Rashidun caliphate. Today, the Egyptian Coptic population is somewhere between 10-15%.
For centuries before the modern Egyptian government, Coptics lived as subordinates under dhimmitude. They paid jizya and were banned from constructing or repairing churches. Court testimonies by Christians were not worth the same as those from Muslims, and conversion from Islam to Christianity meant a death sentence. Presently, permission to build and fix churches is approved under the authority of provincial governors, where such “bureaucracy remains slow and discriminatory”. Of course, these restrictions are not placed on the majority Muslim population. Christian converts are frequently harassed and persecuted.
Open Doors reports that Coptics also endure discrimination in all facets of life, from education and employment to faith and protective legislation. They constantly bear harassment, accusations of blasphemy, physical violence, and even death by Muslims. Christian businesses, churches, and cemeteries are often targeted and Christians are “largely excluded from” government or military positions. Islamists monitor Christian communities in order to inflict suffering, and government authorities do not address or resolve these crimes against Egyptian Coptics.
This isn’t even the worst of it. There have been quite a handful of mass casualty events since 2000:
2000: Kosheh massacre - 21 murdered
2011: Saints Church bombed - 23 murdered; Maspero massacre - 27 murdered by being ran over by a military vehicle (Christian protest against demolition of a church)
2015: 21 Coptic Christians (20 Egyptian, 1 Ghanaian) beheaded by the Islamic State in Libya. One of the most gruesome occurrences of Christian martyrdom (worldwide broadcast)
2016: Cairo Cathedral bombed - 25 murdered
2017: Church attacks in Tanta and Alexandria - over 45 murdered
In just this past October, an young Coptic man by the name of Milad Malak, a church deacon who had moved from Egypt to Libya to find work due to the dreadful Egyptian economy, was kidnapped by ISIS. He was held hostage for ransom, abused, and murdered for his refusal to renounce his Christian faith. Even in his last moments, his faith mattered more than his life.
Eritrea
The nation of Eritrea, bordering Ethiopia and Sudan on the west and the Red Sea on the east in eastern Africa, only officially recognizes four religious groups: SunniIslam, the Tewahedo Eritrean Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and Evangelical Lutheran churches. So Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, Calvinists, Methodists, and literally every other Christian denomination receive no recognition from the Eritrean government.
That means unofficial Christian sects cannot build or own churches and are forbidden to openly practice their faith; you know, like, praying? Even members belonging to groups that are registered are targets, so much so that they have had their citizenship revoked. Christian detainees unjustly and cruelly held in detention facilities are subject to abhorrent abuse including sexual and physical violence, “electrocution, exposure, waterboarding, hanging, noise torture, and denial of medical treatment”. Death from any of these mistreatments or even on its own is not off the table.
The United States Commission on International Freedom reports that “The government utilizes many detainment facilities that are severely dilapidated concrete structures, while others are metal cargo shipping containers that might house hundreds of detainees. Officials also hold detainees in simple holes in the ground, subjecting them to harsh weather conditions. The government is detaining approximately 10,000 prisoners of conscience and detainees of all types in over 300 facilities around the country.”
Ironically, Eritrea is obligated by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which it adopted in 2002, to abide by the tenets of the covenant. The Eritrean constitution itself prohibits religious discrimination and grants the individual freedom to practice and change religion, but the government evidently “violates these rights in practice” by “favoring certain denominations” and “obstructing the religious practices” of outliers.
The systemic discrimination and persecution of Eritrean Christian communities warn us that not all anti-Christian hatred comes from non-state actors and terrorist organizations, but from the government itself — and it is institutionalized by those who are meant to adhere to the social contract, i.e., power deriving from the consent of the governed. I should hardly think that anyone has chosen to be born in Eritrea as a citizen, though I would bet my bottom dollar that they wish they weren’t.
The Middle East
Lebanon
Lebanon offers a different case study than other countries brought to light in this essay. This Mediterranean coastal country, once known as the Paris of the Middle East, at one point boasted a huge Christian majority comprised of the Maronite, Orthodox, and Catholic denominations. The Taif Agreement mandates that the president of Lebanon be a Christian while the prime minister and speaker of the parliament are to be a Sunni Muslim and Shia Muslim, respectively. The constitution is intended to enforce equal parliamentary representation between the Christians and Muslims of Lebanon, developed from a framework in the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990).
Over the last half a century, the Christian population in Lebanon has steadily declined. Take the Christian population in the year 1970, which stood at 62.5% of the total population. As of 2025, that number has fallen to just 32%. Aid to the Church in Need attributes this phenomenon to factors like Lebanon’s economic instability and war, where the internationally recognized terrorist organization Hezbollah operates along the southern Lebanese border, forcing Israel to defend itself against this hostility, and ordinary Lebanese citizens living in the region get caught in the crossfire. Christian communities have increasingly become desolate in Lebanon for these reasons, among others.
Lebanon has enacted and enforced blasphemy laws, which are ambiguous and weaponized against the Christian demographic. The European Center for Law and Justice has raised the concern that “under Lebanon’s vague blasphemy laws, a Christian’s saying that belief in Jesus Christ is the only way to achieve salvation can be construed as committing ‘blasphemy’”. The religious freedom of Christians in Lebanon is scarce, with converts facing harassment, abuse, and discrimination — even from their own families. ECLJ also notes that “Lebanon is a party to” the ICCPR yet its laws contradict the stipulations of the treaty.
These violations go even further. The Lebanese Christian community is unfortunately prone to attacks on and vandalism of “churches and holy sites”. The worst of Christian persecution in Lebanon has culminated in massacres. We can trace these even to the time of the Ottoman Empire when Christians were murdered in the thousands in Mount Lebanon and Damascus during the 1860 civil conflict and again in Mount Lebanon during the First World War by the hundreds of thousands. These, and more, are recorded by the Museum of the Christian Massacres of Lebanon. In the current century, Lebanese Christians have faced deadly attacks perpetrated by Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist militias and communities have been decimated by explosives and automatic weapons discharge. In the event that some of these atrocities against the Christians of Lebanon are not fatal, they render them wounded and/or displaced.
The plight of Christians in Lebanon offers a unique perspective on the dynamics of this issue, illustrating how even with constitutional protections and a historically continuous majority, Christians bear the brunt of a plethora of issues. If they’re not being terrorized, then they’re being displaced or trapped in or around the battlefield.
Syria
The Christmas season of 2024: a Christmas tree is publicly burned in Al-Suqaylabiyah, Syria. By this time, Syria’s long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad had been overthrown by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS; “associated with Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch”). It was these same masked degenerate thugs who burned that Christmas tree, a symbolic representation of attitudes towards the Christian community of Syria. Six months later, a gunman opened fire inside the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus, Syria. He then set off explosives attached to a suicide vest. The terrorist attack cost 22 Christian lives and wounded 63. But these are neither the first nor the last instances of anti-Christian behavior. Open Doors has ranked them number 6 out of 50 in their World Watch List, just one place above Nigeria.
The Syrian Christian community, like Egypt’s, dates back to antiquity. According to the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Paul converted to Christianity in Damascus (Syria’s capital) and “Antioch was the city in which the disciples were first called Christians”. Some Syrian Christians speak the Aramean language, the language spoken by Jesus. The largest denomination of Syria’s Christians is that of the Orthodox community, followed by the Catholic denomination. But as with the Christian populations elsewhere in the region, Syria’s Christian community has shrunk. Before the Syrian civil war (2011), there were over one million Christians. Today, Syrian Christians are numbered around 300,000, just 1.2% of the country’s total population. International Christian Concern estimates that by 2023 around 80% of Syria’s Christians have fled the country in “the previous two decades”.
The overwhelming majority of Christian persecution is at the hands of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), an internationally recognized terrorist organization of similar infamy to Al-Qaeda and Hamas; this is the same group responsible for the beheadings of the Coptics in Libya in 2015. They have made the lives of Christians in Syria nothing less than a living hell. International Christian Concern has reported frequent attacks resulting in displacement, the destruction of churches, kidnappings, and executions. In April 2013 ISIS kidnapped Syrian Orthodox Bishop Youhanna Ibrahim and Greek Orthodox Bishop Boulos Yazji from Aleppo. They were never found. In February 2015, more than 200 Assyrian Christians were kidnapped by ISIS from “villages along the Khabur River” in the northeastern province of Hassakeh. Needless to say, these evil lowlifes keep themselves busy, sparing no time or opportunity to ensure that the Christians of Syria live in fear and are unable to openly practice their faith.
The general political instability within Syria itself also accounts for the suffering of Christian Syrians. Pervasive threats and deadly violence only constitute some of the persecution. A complete lack of protection from the state and generally confined faith-based activities and practices due to these circumstances have amounted to a tragic way of life for Syrian Christians.
Iraq
Iraq, like Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, also holds the remnants of ancient Christian communities. Among these are the Chaldean Catholic, Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Protestant denominations. At the turn of the century, Iraqi Christians were numbered at over one million. As of today, these groups combined only count for 0.4% of the Iraqi population, equaling less than 200,000 Christians, according to Open Doors, which also reports that “Christians are now mainly concentrated in five northern provinces: Nineveh, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Dohuk, and northern Kirkuk”.
The oppression of Iraq’s Christian communities is devastating. Poor political representation, harassment and intimidation by ISIS, exploitation of property, physical and sexual abuse, honor killings, and discrimination in all aspects of public life are rampant among Iraqi Christians. Christian women and girls veil themselves in public for fear of their safety and girls as young as nine years old are legally allowed to be betrothed as child brides, effectively permitting child rape. The education of Christian Iraqi children is perverted with the glorification of “violent jihad and martyrdom” and Islamic education is mandatory in Christian schools. Iraqi Christians avoid any public displays of their faith, including the use of Christian symbols such as the cross.
In the summer of 2014, Christian Iraqis were victims of a horrific genocide, mostly in Mosul and Nineveh but affected in other parts of Iraq as well. 125,000 Christians were displaced. In the city of Mosul, Christians were forced to convert to Islam, pay jizya, or flee with no possessions. Religious buildings and holy sites were destroyed. Tens of thousands were executed, kidnapped and held hostage, imprisoned, and tortured. Many were forced to convert to Islam and conscripted into ISIS. Some Iraqi Christians were trafficked as sex slaves. The true nature of these atrocities committed during that time cannot be sufficiently put into words.
Iraqi Christian communities have been eviscerated over the last 20 years. The 2014 genocide carried out by ISIS was one of the worst massacres in modern history. To say that it is a disgrace to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Christian Iraqis would be an understatement.
I find it juvenile and redundant to proclaim that everyone should freely practice the faith of their choosing. This is, or at least it ought to be, an inherent mechanism of the human experience. Is it controversial to be of the opinion that no Christian should leave for church and return in a body bag? Is it “proper” to desire that Christians in Eritrea or Iraq should have adequate access to scripture and schools without fear? I think it to be an obvious and necessary standard.
It is far from tolerable and quite odious that the conditions of the Christian communities in these countries and the broader African and Middle Eastern regions are so lamentable. I resent the international community for idly standing by as Christians are kidnapped and held for ransom, detained, sexually abused, terrorized, harassed, tortured, and sent to the slaughter. Moreover, I wish there were more I could do to lambaste the Islamic world for its abhorrent mistreatment of Christians in these lands.
The followers of Jesus are generally loving, peaceful adherents of the Christian faith. They have shaped Western civilization as it is and influenced the world for the better. It would be nothing short of a catastrophe for their brothers and sisters to go extinct elsewhere.
