Is Trump closing the door to persecuted Christians

 

The 'golden door' is 'closed': US won't admit persecuted Christian refugees in 2026, report warns

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Friday, September 04, 2026

An Ethiopian refugee who fled the Tigray conflict prays during Sunday Mass at an Ethiopian Orthodox church building built by former Ethiopian refugees, at the village next to Um Raquba refugee camp in Gedaref, eastern Sudan, on December 6, 2020. Some 400 Orthodox Christian believers attended the biggest mass at Jibreel (Gabriel) Church since it reopened its doors just over a week ago to refugees at Um Raqouba camp near the Ethiopian border. | Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP via Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The United States is on track to admit zero Christians fleeing from the world's worst countries for persecution in fiscal year 2026, according to a new report from the global watchdog Open Doors and the Evangelical refugee resettlement agency World Relief. 

The organizations unveiled their new report Thursday at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, documenting the state of Christian persecution worldwide and the number of refugees admitted into the U.S.

The release comes one month before the Trump administration is set to determine the number of refugees to be admitted to the country in fiscal year 2027, which begins Oct. 1.

“The U.S. has essentially taken this golden door and closed it,” asserted World Relief CEO Myal Greene at Thursday’s event. 

The report, titled “State of the Golden Door: Evaluating U.S. Refugee Resettlement and Asylum in Light of Global Christian Persecution,” states that the number of refugee admissions from the 50 countries on the 2026 Open Doors World Watch List had plummeted to zero in fiscal year 2026, which concludes at the end of the month. 

While the report primarily focused on persecuted Christians, it acknowledged that the halt on refugee resettlement during the Trump administration has applied to all religious minorities in those countries, not just Christians.

“Only three refugees were resettled from a country on the Open Doors World Watch List, and those individuals were not religious minorities," the report states. "We can conclude with a high degree of confidence that in FY2026, no refugees experiencing religious persecution will be resettled in the U.S."

The report is critical of President Donald Trump’s designation of an “invasion” at the southern border, his halting of all refugee resettlement in a January 2025 executive order and the administration’s implementation of guidance encouraging enforcement officials to “remove any noncitizens attempting to enter either at or between ports of entry even if they were attempting to seek asylum.”

Although refugees have been admitted to the U.S. in fiscal year 2026, the Trump administration has prioritized the resettlement of white South Africans whom it describes as “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”Statistics in the report reveal that the asylum approval rate for countries on the World Watch List decreased from 58% in fiscal year 2023 to 10% in fiscal year 2026.

As fiscal year 2026 is on track to be the first year in at least a quarter century when not a single Christian refugee was admitted to the U.S., Open Doors estimates that 388 million Christians faced persecution worldwide — one out of every seven Christians around the globe.

Open Doors CEO Ryan Brown said “the breadth of persecution” and “the depth of persecution” against Christians have increased.

Specific examples of Christian persecution mentioned by Brown include Sub-Saharan Africa, which has seen a “continued surge in the ways that violence is characterizing the ways that persecution is being experienced by Christians on the ground there,” as well as the advancement of “digital surveillance” at “exponential rates” in countries such as China, where “the church is being monitored and technology is being used as a tool to create harm and displacement.”

The actions of the Trump administration as they relate to refugees and asylum seekers come as part of an effort to prioritize border security.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Brown lamented that “one of the things that has become confused in the discourse and the dialogue, especially with Christians, is these issues of border security, these issues of … folks fleeing for economic reasons or those types of opportunities that the U.S. seems to uniquely afford them.” 

“That’s not what this report’s talking about," he said. 

“This report is specifically talking about those individuals that have a reasonable fear for their life and their safety because of their Christian faith and identity,” Brown added. “Throughout the Church history … the Holy Spirit has used people having to leave because of persecution to bring the Gospel and to … spark revival in different places around the globe.”

Brown urged Christians to “prayerfully consider those things to try to just separate those issues that often seem to convolute issues of border security, issues of folks chasing economic opportunity and look at this issue of Christian persecution and those being forced to flee persecution on its own merits.”

He doesn't believe expanding refugee resettlement will endanger the border security the Trump administration has prioritized.

“Often when we engage these conversations, we can do so with this trepidation that there … are floodgates of individuals that … if we open the door a crack … that it’s going to be overflowing with … folks that are coming in," Brown said. "That is traditionally not the case.”

Brown characterized asylum seekers as “a relatively small number of people” who “truly have no other options,” insisting that “these are thousands of cases” as opposed to “millions of cases.”

Looking ahead to fiscal year 2027, Greene maintained that he is not "optimistic to expect a significant reversal of the policy.”

“That said, we’re people of faith, and we’re committed to being faithful in our advocacy and being consistent in bringing these causes to light,” he vowed. “We wouldn’t be issuing this report if we didn’t believe that there are Christians and people close to the administration who have a deep desire to see these policy changes and what that entails.”

World Relief Vice President of Advocacy and Policy Matthew Soerens expressed hope that Trump would reimplement the policy of his first administration, where the president made “individuals who are fleeing religious persecution a priority within the refugee determination in 2019.”

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On Being a Christian in Islam > Islamic, murderous, hysteria eventually leads to zero convictions in Islamic courts

 

Pakistan’s Top Court Acquits Last Three Men in 2014 Lynching of Christian Couple, Leaving No One Convicted

Jul 20, 2026 12:00 pm By Ashlyn Davis3 Comments

On July 9, 2026, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted three death-row convicts in the 2014 lynching of Christian couple Shama Bibi and Shahzad Masih by a frenzied 100-member Muslim mob. With this verdict, the top court also wiped out the last remaining convictions in the case, leaving no one convicted in one of Pakistan’s most notorious anti-Christian mob killings. The court further dismissed the Punjab government’s appeal against the Lahore High Court’s earlier acquittal of more than 100 other defendants, effectively ending all criminal proceedings in the case.

The verdict marks the unfortunate and shameful final chapter in a gruesome case of religious hatred and Islamic violence that shocked Pakistan nearly 12 years ago. On Nov. 4, 2014, a Muslim mob brutally killed Shahzad Masih and his pregnant wife, Shama Bibi, in Kot Radha Kishan, a town in Punjab province’s Kasur district. The couple, both brick-kiln laborers and parents of three young children, faced false accusations of desecrating pages of the Quran after Shama reportedly burned household items and her deceased father-in-law’s personal belongings. Rumors quickly spread through the area, and local mosque loudspeakers amplified allegations of blasphemy, drawing hundreds of people to the brick kiln where the couple lived and worked.

Over 100 murderous Islamists stormed the kiln, violently dragged the couple from their living quarters, and beat them mercilessly. The bloodthirsty crowd tortured the hapless couple in full public view, without showing any signs of compassion for the pregnant woman, despite their desperate pleas for mercy.

Shama Bibi and Shahzad Masih, Morning Star News photo courtesy of family

​They then threw the couple into the blazing furnace of the brick kiln, burning both of them alive. Although Muslim mobs have repeatedly killed non-Muslims after spreading false allegations that they had insulted the Quran, the Islamic prophet Muhammad, or Allah across South Asia, including the secular democracy of India, the sheer brutality of the attack on Shama Bibi and Shahzad Masih horrified human rights organizations, religious freedom advocates, and governments around the world; they condemned the lynching as one of the most gruesome acts of religious mob violence in recent history.

Police registered cases against hundreds of suspects, including many identified by name, and eventually indicted 106 people for their roles in the lynching. Prosecutors argued that several men had led the mob, while others actively participated in the assault or encouraged the violence. The scale of the attack and the large number of suspects made the prosecution one of Pakistan’s biggest criminal cases involving religiously motivated mob violence.

In November 2016, a Lahore Anti-Terrorism Court sentenced Hafiz Ishtiaq, Mehdi Khan, Riaz Kamboh, Muhammad Hanif, and Irfan Shakoor to death for their roles in the lynching and burning of the Christian couple. The court also sentenced eight other defendants to two years in prison for aiding the attack, and acquitted 93 suspects after prosecutors failed to prove their involvement in the killings. However, the verdict proved to be only temporary. In 2019, the Lahore High Court acquitted two of the five men who had received death sentences. The court also cleared another 102 defendants, citing the lack of sufficient evidence.

The Punjab government challenged those acquittals before the Supreme Court, while the remaining three men continued to face death sentences. The Supreme Court ultimately erased the last remaining convictions, ruling that the prosecution had failed to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, thereby ending a 12-year legal battle without holding a single person accountable for the brutal lynching of the Christian couple.

The disappointing verdict once again underscores how Pakistan’s justice system has repeatedly, perhaps deliberately, failed to protect victims and deliver justice in cases involving Muslim mob violence. Bishop Samson Shukardin, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan, said the acquittals denied justice to the murdered couple and their family. Several other Christian leaders also warned that the ruling could deepen fear among religious minorities, who already live under the constant threat of false blasphemy accusations and violent mob attacks.

The killing of Shama Bibi and Shahzad Masih remains one of the most horrific attacks on Pakistan’s Christian community in the past two decades. Similar outbreaks of anti-Christian violence have taken place in Gojra in 2009, Joseph Colony in Lahore in 2013, Jaranwala in 2023, and several other parts of the country where fanatical mobs have used false blasphemy allegations as a pretext for lynchings, burning churches and entire Christian neighborhoods and forcing residents to flee their homes. Despite repeated episodes of such violence, Pakistan has yet to demonstrate that it can consistently prevent these attacks or ensure accountability for those responsible.

Is it that they can't or that they won't?

On Being a Christian in Islam > Bogus blasphemy claim in Karachi; Egyptian police arrested Christian victims of Muslim attack

 

Pakistan: Muslim mob traps Christians in their homes, stones police vehicles over bogus ‘blasphemy’ claim

Jul 12, 2026 9:00 am By Robert Spencer6 Comments

As we have seen with Muslim mobs in Pakistan, the mere allegation is enough. No actual proof is required.

Protest Erupts in Pakistan after Christian Framed for ‘Blasphemy’

Morning Star News, July 10, 2026:

LAHORE, Pakistan (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – A violent protest erupted in Karachi, Pakistan on Thursday (July 9) after unidentified persons mailed a desecrated page of the Quran to a Muslim shopkeeper along with photographs of a Christian and his mother, sources said.

Asif Bastian, a Karachi-based Christian rights advocate, said the envelope was delivered to Waleed General Store in Qazafi Colony, Baldia Town. It contained a burnt page of the Quran, photographs of 40-year-old Catholic Azeem Javaid and his mother, and an image of her national identity card.

“As news of the alleged desecration spread, several hundred Muslims, including activists from religious parties, gathered outside the street where Javaid’s home is located and began protesting,” Bastian told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “Around 10 to 15 Christian families live on that street, and they were effectively trapped inside their homes.”

The protesters hurled stones at police vehicles after officers arrived at the scene, forcing an initial withdrawal, Bastian said. The Sindh Province government deployed paramilitary Rangers alongside additional police to bring the situation under control.

“The government’s timely intervention prevented what could have become a major tragedy,” he said. “After officials assured protest leaders that police would conduct a thorough investigation and examine CCTV footage from the Saddar Post Office, where the envelope was reportedly mailed, the demonstration was called off.”

Bastian said authorities later used an armored police vehicle to evacuate Javaid’s family to a secure location.

A source close to the family, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the incident appeared to be an attempt to falsely implicate Javaid in a blasphemy case or incite a mob attack against him.

“Javaid has a stable job and has never been involved in any religious controversy,” the source said. “He has had financial disputes with some individuals, so it is possible someone sought to frame him. It defies logic that a Christian would desecrate the Quran and then mail the material, along with his own photograph, to a shop directly across from his house. No one would deliberately implicate themselves in such a serious offense.”

The source said the family remains under police protection at an undisclosed location. Javaid, who was at work when the incident occurred, has also gone into hiding while authorities investigate the case….

So far, this seems like an unusually good response from police and Rangers.

 

Egypt: Muslim mob assaults Christians as it attacks church, police arrest the Christians

Jul 14, 2026 3:00 pm By Robert Spencer7 Comments

The police freed them only after they abandoned their complaint against the Muslims who attacked them. As in Pakistan and elsewhere, Christians in Egypt can expect no sympathy or protection from authorities. If Muslims victimize them, those authorities will all too often side with the people who are doing the victimizing, as a Muslim will know that if he defends Christians against Muslims, he will face opprobrium (and possibly violence) from his fellow Muslims. Also, Muslim police officers know that the Qur’an tells Muslims to be “ruthless to unbelievers, merciful to one another.” (48:29)

Egyptian police vehicle, cattan2011, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Police arrest Christian victims after attack on Coptic church

by Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post, July 12, 2026:

Egyptian police arrested four Christian men who had been assaulted by a mob during an attack on a Coptic place of worship in Egypt, and freed them two days later once they abandoned the complaint they lodged against those who beat them.

The attack took place in the Upper Egyptian village of Tal Al-Quiblya in Minya Province on Wednesday, according to the United Kingdom-based religious freedom advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), citing the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

A crowd of Muslim residents, most of them women, children and teenagers, reportedly pelted the building with stones while chanting sectarian abuse.

Several Christians suffered injuries. Witnesses on the ground say that the structure and the priest’s car had been damaged.

Officers arrived rapidly and restored order, though only after taking the four Christian men into custody. Their release came on Friday, conditioned on the withdrawal of their complaint against the attackers.

An unknown number of Muslim residents were also arrested….

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has urged that Egypt be added to the State Department’s Special Watch List, which marks states that have carried out or tolerated grave abuses of religious freedom.

Prosecutors have used the country’s blasphemy statutes against people for voicing or defending their beliefs, imposing anything from fines to jail….

Islamization of Europe > Barcelona bans music in schools during Ramadan; UK schools warned against blasphemy; Banknotes to have Churchill replaced with a squirrel

 

Spanish City Bans Music in Schools for Ramadan

Mar 12, 2026 11:00 am By Daniel Greenfield6 Comments

Europe is becoming more Islamized than Iran.

Barcelona (Plaça de Sant Jaume) City Hall by Josep Bracons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

Spain’s radical leftist government has proposed legalizing huge numbers of Muslim illegal migrants, protested President Trump’s bombings of Islamic terrorists in Iran, and Barcelona is now cracking down on dancing and music.

At the rate that Spain is going, it’s going to need its own ‘Reconquista’ before it becomes more Islamic than Iran.

The Barcelona City Council, through its Office of Religious Affairs (OAR), has distributed to the city’s schools the guide ‘Guidelines for educational centers on Ramadan‘, in which it recommends that school principals, as a gesture of respect for the Muslim celebration, which this year began on February 18 and concludes on March 20, not carry out extracurricular activities such as music or dance, which may be considered by some people as “inappropriate” in this month “dedicated to spirituality”.

Nearly a month of bans on music and dancing to accommodate Islamic colonialism.

But as the Ayatollah Khomeini (ZBUH) once said, “There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”

And as countries like Spain choose to Islamize, there will be no fun or joy in them either.

But, as described in George Orwell’s 1984, there will be other pleasures.

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever. ”

Or as Islam calls it, “Jihad.”

Iranians are rebelling against Islamization, but too few Europeans have the courage to join them in standing up to it.

Somebody didn't get the memo. Blasphemy is not against the law in the UK.

UK: Labour councils warn schools children’s art may be blasphemous to Islam; music and dance classes offend Islam

Mar 12, 2026 12:00 pm By Christine Douglass-Williams15 Comments

It is astonishing how so many Westerners, particularly leaders, could ignore so much obvious evidence of how the Sharia insidiously embeds itself into any society, as Muslims manipulate the mores of that society to expand its scope.

The indoctrination of children in schools is particularly effective.

In the case of Western societies, the combination of white guilt, DEI and a phobia of being called “intolerant,” “racist” or “Islamophobic” has been extensively manipulated to transmit Islamic tenets to Western countries and expand their influence within them. This stealthy operation has been patient and successful.

If Labour Councils had warned schools about giving offense to Islam decades ago, the warning would have been recognized as preposterous, but society has become habituated to unreasonable accommodation of Muslims. The ground is now fertile in Britain to expand the Sharia, and now this is happening more rapidly.

Note also the audacity of Labour Councils to include as a guideline in schools that Jesus may not be depicted in images as well, since He is regarded as a prophet in Islam. Few Christians would take any issue with images of Jesus, but  Labour Councils care nothing about offending Christians.

Far too many locations in the West are transforming to look increasingly like Muslim countries, in which Christianity and all other religions are regarded as inferior to Islam.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons

“Pupils’ drawings could be blasphemous under Islamic law, Labour councils tell schools – while music and dance classes may go against the teachings of Islam,” 

by Francine Wolfisz, Daily Mail, March 11, 2026:

Children’s drawings could be considered blasphemous, while music and dance lessons could contravene the teachings of Islam, local councils have warned schools.

The guidance has been issued to teachers across northern England as part of a publication intended to highlight ‘sensitivity and awareness around faiths and beliefs’.

Sharing The Journey has been designed to help schools ‘demonstrate a sensitive and positive approach to religious and cultural diversity to pupils, parents and carers’.

It adds: ‘Schools will want to be flexible in catering for religious differences.’

This includes being aware of the ‘sensitivities’ that some Muslim parents may have around the ‘teaching of aspects of art, dance, drama, music, physical education, religious education and RSHE’.

The publication cites art as an example, stating that Islamic culture and civilisation has ‘a rich artistic tradition’ – but schools may find there are religious exceptions.

‘A three-dimensional imagery of humans is considered idolatrous by some Muslims,’ the guidance warns.

‘It is very important that the school understands this and is also careful not to ask its students to reproduce images of Jesus, Prophet Mohammed or other figures considered to be prophets in Islam….

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A squirrel seems somehow quite appropriate for this Labour government

UK to Replace Churchill on Banknotes With a Squirrel, and That’s How Things Are Going There

Mar 12, 2026 1:30 pm By Robert Spencer8 Comments

My latest in PJ Media is a VIP article. I am happy to be able to offer you a 5% discount on becoming a VIP member at PJ Media. Just enter the code SPENCER when you sign up here.

Sir Winston Churchill, Yousuf Karsh, Public domain

Britain’s civilizational suicide is taking place, as you might expect, under the politest of veneers. These affairs don’t have to be messy and loud, now, do they? Every act of cultural surrender and self-abnegation is taking place with the most rational of explanations. And so as that once green and pleasant land goes gentle into that good night, it is comforted by the thought that as its demise approached, it never once lapsed into anything so tasteless as “racism,” “Islamophobia,” or a desire to preserve (heaven forfend!) its own history, heritage, and national character.

There is more. Read the rest here.

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