Speaking for freedom

Nina Shea is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute. She has been a human rights lawyer for over 30 years and served on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom seven times from 1999 to 2012. Her reports, congressional testimonies, and conferences about persecuted minorities have helped shape U.S. foreign policy in the wake of rising Islamic extremism and authoritarian regimes. The following are edited excerpts from our conversation.

What sparked your interest in advocating for persecuted Christians and minorities? I became interested in the topic as a law student during the Cold War. I volunteered for a group that was working on the release of Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union. Those were Jews who had been trying to leave for Israel because they were terribly persecuted. And because they were asking permission to leave, it made them even more suspect, and they ended up in the gulag. That really gripped me and opened my eyes to how repressive other systems were.

Describe the situation for Christians in the Middle East this past decade. The Christians of the Middle East are rapidly vanishing because they are under a lot of pressure. There have been a number of direct assaults against them. For example, under the ISIS “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, they fled their ancient villages in the Nineveh Plains of Iraq. Many of them fled the region, and the population really depleted. It’s a great loss to our heritage as Christians to have the cradle of Christianity depleted of its Christians on our watch in our generation after 2,000 years.

Is it a bloody retreat? We’re not seeing today an outright slaughter of Christians—that’s a misconception that should be clarified. Instead, we may see an occasional murder, and we’ll see the confiscation of properties and general discrimination, and then they’ll just leave.

If Christian communities in the Middle East are declining, why is persecution increasing? Minorities in the Middle East, whether ethnic or religious, have a very difficult time because there’s very little tolerance in most of those countries. Either you’re in the majority and in power or you’re not. And if you’re not, and you do not have a militia of your own, like the Kurds, then you’re extremely vulnerable.

Syrians celebrated the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad in December. The Sunni Islamist group taking over most of Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), claims it will support the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. What’s your take? I think they’ll have a very difficult time for several reasons. One is the history of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of this group. They started out with ISIS and with al-Qaeda, and then Jolani went to Syria and created something called al-Nusra Front, which was a franchise of al-Qaeda. Then Jolani ended up in Idlib province in western Syria, and the churches were pretty much closed or destroyed and one was turned into an Islamic educational center. The church bells didn’t ring for 10 years. So why should we trust him when he says everything has changed? He puts on a suit and trims his beard and says, “I’m a completely changed person.” I think this is deception. We’ve heard this before from the Taliban saying that they would respect the rights of women if the United States left Afghanistan.

Has Jolani given any indication he will oppress minorities? He’s already introduced problematic amendments to the educational curriculum in Syria. The changes refer to “Jews and Christians” in a way that lays the foundation for a dhimmi status—a second-class status—for Christians and others who aren’t Sunni Muslim. He also has a coalition with some militias that he’s not entirely in control of from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, and other places. These are hardened jihadists with global ambitions to establish a caliphate.

You were involved in four reports about Saudi educational materials promoting extremist views and in 2011 shared your findings with officials in Saudi Arabia. How would you rate the progress the Saudis have made since then? Over the years, they have cleaned up the Saudi textbooks, and it’s an amazing thing. They should have done it a long time ago. Generations of people have been poisoned by this really noxious teaching that Christians and Jews are subhuman, that they’re “apes and pigs.” And that jihad is the pinnacle of Islam.

Where are we still seeing the effects of that “poisoning”? Jolani himself was born in Saudi Arabia, and his parents lived there for a while. We’re seeing that ideological indoctrination spread now to Syrian textbooks, which is really upsetting to me, knowing that it’s a step backwards into this hard-line, bigoted view of Christians, Jews, and others. The Druze are very worried. I even encountered Muslims from Indonesia saying this has never been our tradition and now it’s seeping into our school systems too.

How did the Biden administration’s track record on religious freedom compare with the first Trump administration? Well, I think the difference is very stark. The Trump administration prioritized religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy. Under Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo established a Commission on Unalienable Rights to look at the rationale for unalienable rights and identify them. Religious freedom was prominent. When Biden came in and appointed Secretary Antony Blinken, one of the first things he did in March 2021 was to disband the Unalienable Rights commission. So instead of prioritizing religion under the Biden administration, you had it replaced with climate change reforms. I think climate change reforms are important, but to completely suppress discussion about religious freedom is totally unwarranted and unconscionable.

What are your foreign policy recommendations for the new administration? I would hope to see a revival of Trump’s June 2020 executive order prioritizing international religious freedom and maybe a Rose Garden speech to the American people on the importance of religious freedom. And to talk about both the Middle East and China. I’m not talking about sending troops or any specific policies. But to actually raise these issues in an international arena with the standing that the president has would really give it projection.

What is one interesting thing about you that most people don’t know? I come from an interfaith family. I was raised by a Presbyterian mother, and my father was Catholic. I’m Catholic, and I’m married to a man who is Jewish. I know what it’s like to be in an interfaith pluralistic society in my own home and the give and take that it requires.