The World and Everything in It: March 4, 2025

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

It’s three and a half years now since the US pulled out of Afghanistan:

RUSH: There was chaos. Nobody knew who was who…Those who could get on a plane got on a plane.

And now new changes in policy leave some Afghans in limbo…again.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Also, executive orders: how powerful are they, and who can stop them?

And why some Christians are drawn to homesteading.

FUHRMANN: I started to see this, you know, this model of, kind of homesteading or kind of just, you know, providing healthy foods raised God's way to people directly.

And WORLD commentator AS Ibrahim on the killing of Christians by Islamic terrorists.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, March 4th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine: Trump pauses military aid » President Trump has paused all military aid to Ukraine.

That comes in the wake of a disastrous Oval Office meeting on Friday, but also just hours after remarks that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made yesterday.

ZELENSKYY: [SPEAKING UKRAINIAN]

Speaking in London, Zelenskyy said—quote—“An agreement to end the war is still very, very far away, and no one has started all these steps yet.”

That further drew the Ire of President Trump, who told reporters at the White House:

TRUMP:  It should not be that hard a deal to make. It could be made very fast. Now, maybe somebody doesn't want to make a deal.

Zelenskyy does not see a realistic path right now to—in his words, a “just” and “sustainable” peace with Russia.

But Trump believes Zelenskyy still hopes to bring Russia to its knees on the battlefield before seriously engaging in talks. And that is something President Trump does not see as realistic. Pausing military support is meant to apply pressure to the Ukrainian president.

Ukraine: Moving forward, economic deal » With regard to Friday’s Oval Office argument, Vice President JD Vance said last night:

VANCE:  We can look past all that stuff, but the president has set a very clear goal for his administration. He wants the killing to stop. And I think that it's very important that President Zelensky and, of course, President Putin to they've both got to come to the negotiating table, and that's ultimately where things broke apart.

Zelenskyy Monday said he thinks the relationship with the Trump administration can be repaired. He also said he remains ready to sign an economic deal that the two presidents were set to sign last week before their meeting went off the rails.

Trump said on Monday that he still believes that deal over mineral rights, among other things, can still move forward. It’s unclear if the pausing of military aid will change the equation.

Mexico, Canada tariffs » Twenty-five percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico took effect this morning.

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said Monday her country was ready to respond in kind.

JOLY: We are ready with 155 billion worth of tariffs, and we're ready with the first tranche of tariffs, which is 30 billion.

After delaying the tariffs for one month, President Trump said the neighboring nations had not done enough to stop the flow of fentanyl into the country.

But the tariffs aren’t merely punitive. Trump says the tariffs will bring more manufacturing back to the U.S.

TRUMP:  I would just say this to people in Canada or Mexico, if they're going to build car plants, the people that are doing them are much better off building here because we have the market. We're the market where they sell the most.

Democrats in Washington say American consumers will pay the price for the tariffs, literally. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:

SCHUMER:  When Donald Trump starts a trade war for Canada and Mexico, it means rising costs for produce, for groceries, for cars.

President Trump maintains that his trade and other economic policies will ultimately bring inflation down, while creating millions of jobs.

Trump Taiwan TSMC deal announcement » And at the White House on Tuesday, Trump announced a new deal with the world’s biggest chip-maker, designed to bring more manufacturing to the U.S.

TRUMP:  Today, Taiwan Semiconductor is announcing that they will be investing at least 100 billion in new capital in the United States over the next short period of time to build state of the art semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

That’s on top of an already-announced $65 billion investment in the U.S., including three plants in Arizona.

The company produces chips for tech giants like Apple, Intel and Nvidia.

Trump said semiconductors are “The backbone of the 21st century economy” powering all kinds of technologies.

TRUMP:  We must be able to build the chips and semiconductors that we need right here and American factories with American skill and American labor.  

He called that a matter of both economic and national security.

Trump address to joint session » Trade tariffs and the war in Ukraine are sure to be two major topics in Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress tonight. House Speaker Mike Johnson says he hopes Democratic lawmakers will be respectful of the president.

JOHNSON: Everyone should stand and give him an ovation for what he’s been able to accomplish in the first few weeks. It's incredible.

Democrats say he’s done an incredible amount of damage. And party leaders are encouraging Democratic lawmakers to each bring with them one person who they say has been hurt by Trump’s policies.

Tonight’s speech won’t be called a State of the Union address, as tradition dictates that presidents don’t deliver official State of the Union updates, until their second year in office.

Israel latest » Israel is renewing its warning to Hamas, after the expiration of a ceasefire deal over the weekend. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more:

NETANYAHU: [SPEAKING HEBREW]

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that there will be unimaginable consequences if the terror group does not release the remaining Israeli hostages.

His remarks came after he said Hamas rejected a new ceasefire plan proposed by the U.S. It would require the release of half of the remaining Israeli hostages. And in return, Israel would extend the initial ceasefire for an additional 42 days.

That would halt the war through both Ramadan and Passover.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: processing special immigration claims for Afghan allies. Plus, self-sufficient living on the small family farm.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 4th of March.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Next up: Afghans who helped the US.

President Trump temporarily shut down the refugee resettlement program. But many people are now urging the president to make an exception: for Afghans, who assisted the U.S. government before it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.

MAST: But others argue the term Afghan allies doesn’t distinguish between those who directly assisted the U.S. government and others seeking to escape Taliban rule for other reasons.

WORLD’s Compassion reporter Addie Offereins published her findings last month on the problem.

Here’s WORLD Radio’s Anna Johansen Brown with her story: 

AUDIO: (GUN SHOTS, PEOPLE YELLING) Afghan residents and those fleeing reprisal from the Taliban were still flooding the area Monday desperately trying to find a way out of the country.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: The Taliban stormed Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul on August 15th, 2021. Afghanistan’s president fled the country and U.S. troops began a chaotic withdrawal from the country with hundreds of thousands of Afghans begging for a spot on one of the departing planes.

AUDIO: A U.S. official says troops that had taken over the airport had to fire their guns in the air to keep people off the tarmac and the planes flying. The U.S. says it’s trying to get tens of thousands of at risk Afghans who worked for the government out.

Afghans relocating to the United States relied on three immigration pathways: special immigrant visas, the refugee resettlement system, and humanitarian parole. Trump’s refugee resettlement pause affected all three.

Afghans who worked directly for the U.S. government or military are eligible for what’s called a special immigrant visa—or S-I-Vs. It includes a pathway to permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship.

VANDIVER: My generation of veterans grew up fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shawn VanDiver served in the U.S. Navy off the coast of Iraq.

VANDIVER: Critical to our efforts are our wartime allies.

He now heads up an advocacy coalition called Afghan Evac.

VANDIVER: There are about 1,200 to 1,500 between Qatar and Albania that have approved SIVs in their passports.

The Trump administration clarified the refugee pause wouldn’t bar SIV holders from entering the country, but VanDiver said the program didn’t escape unscathed.

VANDIVER: You can still apply for a visa, you can still interview for a visa, there’s just no help to get you from Afghanistan to where you can interview for that visa and no help to get from there to the United States once you’ve earned your shot at the American dream.

Some Republican lawmakers are echoing VanDiver’s plea for an Afghan exception. Here’s Texas Rep. Michael McCaul on CBS’ Face the Nation:

MCCAUL: ​ They worked with our troops to defeat the Taliban, which unfortunately, Biden surrendered to. But it seems to me, we ought to live up to our word, otherwise down the road in another conflict, no one’s going to trust us.

The number of SIV visas is capped, and there’s only about 10,000 spots left in the program. But roughly 130,000 Afghans have applied, not including their family members. It’s unclear how many would actually qualify as legitimate SIV applicants.

And current terminology isn’t helping. The available tallies of Afghans waiting in their home country or third countries lump together SIV applicants and Afghans applying for refugee status or humanitarian parole.

Some advocates claim all of them are Afghan allies.

RUSH: So Afghan allies, it has a lot of emotional aspects to it.

Nayla Rush is a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reducing immigration.

RUSH: And these are people supposedly who worked with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and because of this collaboration were threatened.

She pointed out that not all of the Afghans in the refugee pipeline worked directly with the U.S. government. The Biden administration widened the definition of allies when it designated some Afghans as Priority 2 refugees.

RUSH: If you have worked for a US government funded program or project in Afghanistan supported through a US government grant or cooperative agreement…Other Afghans who were employed in Afghanistan by a U.S. based media organization or NGO. It has widened the group of people who have access to this program.

Marjila Badakhsh trained journalists in Afghanistan until her employer closed their offices after the Taliban took over in 2021. Her organization was affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy, which receives the majority of its funding from the U.S. government.

Badakhsh qualified for a Priority 2 refugee visa and finished her vetting at a U.S. military base in Qatar.

BADAKHSH: So I was there for 27 days and after my refugee process was done there I came to United States.

She knows of others who were waiting to reunite with family already in the United States.

BADAKHSH: I can definitely feel them because I was in the same situation that they are now, but for me there was a future, I could come, but for them with this policy, if it lasts for long it will be very tough for our Afghan families and refugees.

The Biden administration allowed tens of thousands of other Afghans to enter the U.S. on humanitarian parole. That’s a temporary status that includes work authorization but doesn’t have a pathway to permanent residency. In the chaos of Kabul’s fall, Rush said it wasn’t clear whether all the Afghan parolees assisted the U.S. government or even would have qualified for refugee status in the first place.

RUSH: There was chaos. Nobody knew who was who. Those who could get on a plane got on a plane.

Rush said she would understand if the Trump administration made an exception for SIV applicants who have been accepted into the program already but haven’t yet reached the United States.

But she said cries for a broader exception for Afghan allies don’t make any distinction between refugees, parolees, or SIV holders.

Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s refugee resettlement suspension.

AUDIO: The ruling came after a lawsuit brought by major refugee aid groups. They argued Trump’s executive order…goes against the system Congress created for moving refugees into the U.S.

The government is likely to appeal the ruling. And, so far, it’s unclear how the ruling will affect Afghan resettlement.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: executive orders.

You’ve just heard of the legal skirmishes around President Trump’s executive order affecting refugee resettlement.

Every president from George Washington on has issued executive orders… the one exception being the 9th president, William Henry Harrison who died right after taking office.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Abraham Lincoln issued perhaps the most famous executive order: the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. That changed the legal status of 3 ½ million enslaved African Americans.

Joe Biden issued a total of 160 during his single term. President Trump’s count so far this year is nearly 80. The latest from this past Saturday, making English the official language of the US.

Joining us to talk about executive orders is Karen Holt, professor of political science at Virginia Tech.

REICHARD: Karen, my understanding of what an executive order is…is pretty straightforward: a written directive signed by the president that orders the government to take specific actions to ensure the laws are faithfully executed. Is that accurate?

KAREN HOLT: Well, that sounds like a basic question, but in many ways it's not. Sometimes it gets used to refer to anything that a U.S. president does. That is in terms of trying to make policy decisions or issue policy assertions or ideas or initiatives. And that's too broad of a sense…but it's become a more clear and explicit legal instrument really going back to the Franklin Roosevelt administration. And that's when they started being numbered and started being collected by the federal register. But it's important to be clear that executive orders are themselves a specific kind of presidential action. And other things that are called executive orders may also be things like presidential directives or presidential proclamations or a whole range of other kinds of activities.

REICHARD: What’s the source of presidential power to issue executive orders?

HOLT : Executive orders have been seen, going back to George Washington, as seen as being a way for a president to exercise their Article II of the Constitution's powers in terms of saying, my responsibility is to make sure that the laws are faithfully executed. Those laws, of course, are made by Congress, but they have to be consistent with the U.S. Constitution. And so an argument would be made that a president's authority to issue these executive orders comes from at least two different places, one from the Constitution itself, but secondly from Congress and the statutes that Congress passes.

REICHARD: Alright. I think most people understand executive orders as the president telling the executive branch agencies to accomplish his priorities. Easy to issue but not so easy to implement, correct?

HOLT: That's fair. However, many executive orders actually have started on the agency side. And under those circumstances, some agencies may be appealing to the White House and saying, Mr. President, it would be helpful to get your specific guidance in writing. Other times, it's used as almost a negotiation process within the executive branch. And so it's important to keep that broader landscape in mind although clearly it's changed over time. Certainly talking about incoming presidents what we've seen over the last several administrations is that there's a flurry on January 20th. Presidents are issuing executive orders for a variety of reasons, in some cases overturning the executive orders that their predecessors put in place, and so making it clear to all there's been a change in leadership and we've got new priorities and new goals. The other thing that new presidents often do is issue executive orders that are more hortatory, that are more focused on the general public and their political audiences outside the executive branch, simply saying, I won the election and these are what my plans are going to be going forward for the executive branch agencies. That then can lead to some of the implementation concerns that get raised from the executive branch agency side. Well, what does that mean specifically that we need to do?

REICHARD: To be clear, the president cannot write a new statute because that’s the job of Congress. But an order can tell federal agencies how to implement a statute, right?

HOLT: Precisely, precisely, how to implement a statute, and in some cases, how to prioritize that implementation. And so we've had some presidents that have said, don't pay as much attention to this part of the statute. Executive orders can also give agencies guidance that way as well.

REICHARD: Okay, let's talk about how executive orders can be stopped. And we're seeing this playing out right now with some of the executive orders President Trump issued. Checks and balances.

HOLT: One of the clear checks and balances is that many of the initial executive orders that come out of new administrations, not so much this one in this time around, but in the first term, many times the Trump administration was issuing executive orders without an indication of what their statutory authority was or what their constitutional authority was. So one way then that parties can bring claims into the federal court system is to say, you know, the president doesn't have the statutory authority or the constitutional authority to do these kinds of things. So that's one claim. Other times, parties from the outside can say, Congress may have said this, but this is not the precedent as in court decisions, that is not the common interpretation of that part of the statute. Or what the president is proposing is a different interpretation of the law. So that could be another line of argument as well.

REICHARD: How have executive orders evolved over time? What factors influence those changes?

HOLT: Well, whole range of things. But among those factors …we saw a real increase of executive orders really going back to the late 19th and the early 20th century as government began to expand over time. So then we start thinking about when was the federal government taking on new responsibilities and coping with new tasks. Most of us are going to think immediately of the Great Depression. Others will think about the World War II and other wars. So all of those things tend to be linked to increased use of executive orders. So growth in the size and scope and complexity of government is part of that. Final thing is, and this brings us up to the present day, What some of it has to do is when Congress becomes very closely divided or gridlocked, then that opens up an avenue for the president to say, you know, things need to be done and I have this separate executive authority to do things. And that's why you heard Barack Obama say, for example, with a stroke of a pen, I can change things. Now it’s not in fact quite that easy.

REICHARD: Could you provide an example of executive orders meant to address a certain issue but led to an unintended consequence?

HOLT: Going back to Franklin Roosevelt and in the run up to World War II the US government was really starting to increase surveillance of people in the United States that might have links back to Europe and Japan. That has had longer-term consequences. And I don't think either Franklin Roosevelt or those around him in Congress or elsewhere fully anticipated. This is not a new set of concerns. In the first Trump administration, that immediate order on the so-called Muslim ban had all kinds of feed-on effects. One can argue that that increased some of the concern with the incoming Trump administration anyway in terms of its contacts with other parts of the world and within the United States. It also led to a whole range of efforts in the first Trump administration to have to continue to go back and redo those executive orders because they hadn't fully anticipated what differences they would make not only immediately with people trying to reach the United States, but also in entire other parts of the country. For example, places that have large numbers of folks that do a lot of travel back and forth, whether that's for business travel or family travel or a variety of things, none of those were fully anticipated because the response was to an immediate perceived problem and an effort to fulfill a campaign promise. I chose first Trump because that got a lot of media attention. But certainly one can look at the Obama administration as well as at the Biden administration and how it dealt with this whole range of immigration issues and issues at the border, certainly.

REICHARD: Karen Holt is a political scientist at Virginia Tech. Thank you so much.

HOLT: Sure. Wonderful to talk to you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Thirty-five years ago, Pennsylvania high school senior Shawn Moyer was in a bit of a bind. His prom date had just bailed on him for another guy. 

Enter junior Elena Hershey, the backup date, set up by mutual friends. Audio from WHTM-TV:

AUDIO: She was a remarkably nice person. She was pretty and she was smart.

He was student council president, he was most likely to succeed…

They had a great time, then went their separate ways. Moyer became a doctor. Hershey moved to Colorado.

Decades passed.

But then, a twist: mutual friends mentioned to her that Moyer was in trouble: on dialysis, waiting for his third kidney transplant since the age of 16. 

HERSHEY: I had already planned on donating a kidney so I was glad I heard about that so I could offer my kidney to him.

She wasn’t a match, but that didn’t stop her. Through a donor swap program, her kidney went to a stranger, moving Moyer up the list. Then in February, he got the call:

HERSHEY: He texted me and I saw it and I caught my breath and I started sweating a little bit and crying a little bit.

The best part? Moyer received his transplant late last month. He’s recovering well.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: From backup prom date to lifesaving backup plan.

MAST: Not bad!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 4th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Homesteading. It’s a way of life that focuses on self-sufficiency and sustainable living. The modern homesteading movement has grown by leaps and bounds since the pandemic began.

REICHARD: The term may seem contradictory—modern homesteading. Here’s WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson.

AUDIO: [Sound of gravel driveway]

KIM HENDERSON: Jack and Kim Fuhrmann have a homestead in Gretna, Virginia. It’s called Our Father’s Farm. The Fuhrmanns were missionaries before they bought these 60-acres.

JACK: On the mission field 7 years in Africa, serving among Arab Muslims there, was a tremendous challenge . . .

Difficult times in Africa drove Jack, a seminary graduate, to a deeper study of the Bible.

JACK: To see what His Word really says about family, and the functioning of the family . . .

At the same time, he was immersed in an agrarian society, one that stuck to the old ways of farming. Jack began to admire some of their methods. He says God was teaching him that He has a design for every animal he created.

JACK: . . . see beautiful fruit result from you know, stewarding the animals in that way, or the land. Or we can think that we as men have come up with a better factory production method of producing food.

The Fuhrmanns came back to the United States in 2006 to care for their aging parents. By then they were reading and researching and praying about farming.

JACK: I started to see this model of, kind of homesteading or kind of just, you know, providing healthy foods raised God's way to people directly. And that you could actually maybe make a living off of that.

The term homesteading is a pretty broad one. The state with the most self-proclaimed homesteaders is Montana. It’s followed by North Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. But the Fuhrmanns bought land in Virginia. Today, their farm produces pasture-raised poultry, grass-fed beef, and Thanksgiving turkeys. Oh, and lots of milk.

HOPE: This is where we milk the cows.

That’s Hope Fuhrmann. She’s 23—one of the 9 Fuhrmann children.

HOPE: So we bring four in here, wash them off, prep them, hook them up, and then we bring four in here, wash them off, while these are being milked, and then we swap.

She’s giving a tour of a hundred-year-old tobacco barn on their property. It has low ceilings typical of that period, and it's where she milked 33 cows this morning. Even with the machines they use, it took 2 hours.

In Virginia, it’s illegal to sell raw milk. So homesteaders who want to profit from milk do it through herd share programs.

HOPE: You sign a contractual agreement to buy into our herd share program. And you pay for that, and then you pay boarding fees, which is to pay for us taking care of your cow. And then, you know, in return, you get milk every week.

The farm property also includes a small storefront with freezers and refrigerators.

AUDIO: [Sound of fridge opening]

Hope walks over to open a refrigerator full of items available to herdshare owners.

HOPE: Yogurt, whole milk, yogurt and skim milk yogurt . . .

Just outside, a customer, or rather a “herd share owner,” has driven up.

WOMAN: And so last week's went with them…

Ashley Lumpkins is a busy mom, but she’s come 45 miles for her raw milk because she missed her regular pickup in the town of Danville. The Fuhrmanns deliver their products as far away as Roanoke.

WOMAN: Once you get the raw dairy quality, you don't really want to buy anything from the store again . . .

The Fuhrmanns’ farm is thriving now, but Jack’s wife, Kim, says people should be careful not to romanticize homesteading. Their family’s experience includes a big learning curve.

One tough experience involved their flock of Thanksgiving turkeys. They had 150 poults, or baby turkeys, ready to move to the field. A storm blew through, stressing the poults. They all died.

KIM: Once you grow them to full maturity and you sell them all, that is your entire winter paycheck on the farm, that's how you buy the shoes. That's how you buy the groceries. That's how you pay the electric bill…

Homesteading is hard. The reasons for failure can include starting without a plan or a budget. Not seeking mentors. Taking on too many projects.

But God saw the Fuhrmanns through that winter, and other hard times since then. But Hope and her older sister, Sheila, say growing up on the farm was priceless.

[KH: Did you kind of like escape out here in the afternoons when you were done with school?]

SISTERS: We would go for walks a lot, we'd explore.

AUDIO: [Sound of chickens]

HOPE: So this is our egg mobile. It’s what we call it . . .

Mom Kim remembers when her son, barely 2 years old, came into their house with eggs in both hands.

KIM: He goes, “Working hard. What would you do without me?” We were like, we don't know. We would be up the creek. We need you so bad. We are so glad that you're here.” So it's like little farm kids never really have to wonder why am I here? And do I have a purpose?

Hope and Sheila seem pretty sure of their purpose. Sheila can name a lot of ways farm work builds character.

SISTERS: There's physical labor, you're having to work with other people, other people who, you know, rubbed you the wrong way, often, you are working with nature, you're working with lives, animals’ lives that depend on you. So I think the biggest thing, they just want us to be the kind of people that God can use wherever he places us.

Homesteading isn’t for everyone, but it's hard to deny its growing popularity. Jack Fuhrmann was a commercial pilot before he was a missionary. It was a big leap of faith to become a homesteader.

JACK: I don't necessarily advise it for everyone. But it's what the Lord had for us and I’m very, very grateful, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Gretna, Virginia.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 4th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, WORLD Opinions contributor A.S. Ibrahim on the latest killing of Christians in Africa—and why it’s part of a disturbing pattern.

A.S. IBRAHIM: The world continues to witness as Muslim terrorists massacre Christians, and the media rarely care to cover such horrific attacks.

This time the Muslim butchery of 70 Christians occurred in the majority-Christian village of Mayba in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A group of Muslim militants from the Allied Democratic Forces—or A-D-F— entered the Christian village in the early hours of the day, knocking on doors and seizing whomever they could hold.

The terrorist group with ties to the Islamic State led the captives to a nearby Protestant church. Later their bodies were discovered inside the church. Reports describe the victims as having been bound, with many beheaded, likely with machetes.

Congo is Africa’s second-largest Christian-majority nation—after Nigeria—with over 93% of the population identifying as Christians. Catholics and Protestants make up about 85% of the total number of Christians.

In the past decade, ADF terrorized parts of western Uganda and eastern Congo, especially in vulnerable villages. While an army presence and government influence can often be found in major cities, the small, isolated villages are vulnerable to rebel attacks.

Many may rush to claim that this atrocity has nothing to do with Islam, arguing that Islam doesn’t condone violence against Christians, but they will be wrong.

Ten years ago, on February 15th, 2015, ISIS terrorists executed 21 Coptic Egyptian Christians on a beach in Libya. The event sent shockwaves around the world due to its brutality and the stark display of faith by the victims.

The brutal attack on the Copts in 2015 was repeated with the Congolese Christians in 2025. Muslim terrorists identified Christians, abducted them as poor and vulnerable people who are unable to resist, and led them to slaughter.

This is the horrific reality many Christians face at the hands of Muslim terrorists in many parts of the world.

This isn’t a time to claim all religions have bad people—wrong timing. It isn’t the time to rationalize an endless debate about “what’s the true Islam”—a misleading distraction. Nor is it a time to speak of how the majority of Muslims are peaceful people who aim no harm against anyone—an irrelevant claim.

Islam, as written, definitely offers reasons for many Muslims to delight in butchering non-Muslims, especially Christians. ISIS and ADF know Islam and delight in following its precepts. The Quran, Muhammad’s teachings, and the authoritative historical accounts of Islam all—yes, all—include statements and examples that clearly allow Muslims to target Christians and kill them for Allah’s sake and to advance Islamic dominance. Once a Muslim identifies a Christian as an infidel, all brutal actions can be legitimized through religious commands.

Unless we expose these teachings and claims as inhumane and morally abhorrent, nothing can change. But we can do more. The international community needs to help struggling countries identify areas where terrorists thrive. It should come together to support enhancing local security and seek to cut the lifeline of these groups. Not only drying up their funding through imposing sanctions on countries and groups that aid terrorists, but also by crippling their ability to recruit new soldiers in underprivileged and isolated regions.

Governments can—and should—shut down Islamic propaganda pipelines and identify and jail recruiters. In a sense, Muslim leaders who are open about disavowing Islamic terrorism are much needed in this regard. While non-Muslim thinkers can tackle Islam’s claims right on, Muslim leaders—who are vocal in condemning Islamic terrorism—can influence Muslims in crucial places, including mosques, schools, and online spaces where radicalization emerges and festers. And it must be done before more attacks like this one take place.

I’m A.S. Ibrahim.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: an update on DOGE and federal workforce cuts—and what it means for President Trump’s agenda. That’s on Washington Wednesday.

And, on World Tour, a special report from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where challenges keep stacking up.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible records that: “One of the criminals who were hanged railed at [Jesus] saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And [Jesus] said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’” —Luke 23:39-43.

Go now in grace and peace.

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