By Frank R. Wolf, former Member of US Congress –
Speech delivered at Coptic Solidarity Conference “Uprooted and Endangered: Defending the Religious Minorities Of the Middle East,” on June 12, 2025
It’s good to be with you today.
I am encouraged to see the various religious groups gathered together. There is strength in numbers.
We all know what is happening to the endangered religious minorities in the countries of the Middle East, and you will be looking at this during this conference. We see news stories every day about persecution in the region.
So I will focus my remarks on why I think everyone—church leaders, government officials, Members of Congress, everyone– should be interested and involved and what can be done to improve the situation for religious minorities in the Middle East.
I have been to Syria, to Egypt and Iraq. I was the first Member of Congress to go to Iraq after the war broke out and have been back many times. I know and keep in touch with people in the region.
The people and places of the Middle East are the subject of much of the Bible.
Syria
The Apostle Paul, who wrote 13 books of the New Testament, met Jesus on the road to Damascus. The house where Ananias came to Paul still stands on Straight Street. I visited that house.
The Christian community in Syria has roots dating back to the first century.
So how can we not care about Syria?
Egypt
As told in Matthew 2, Jesus, Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt.
Joseph was sold into slavery and taken to Egypt where he eventually saved his family.
Moses was born in Egypt and led the Israelites out from Egyptian slavery.
So how can we not care about Egypt?
Iraq
With the exception of Israel, the Bible refers more to the cities, regions and ancient nations of Iraq than any other country.
The patriarch Abraham came from Ur, a city in Iraq, now modern-day Nasiriya, where I was during the Iraq war.
The spiritual revival as told in the book of Jonah occurred in Nineveh where ISIS blew up his tomb.
The events of the book of Daniel took place in Iraq.
So how can we not care about Iraq?
There is rich Biblical history that happened in this region.
Now, over the span of a few decades, the Middle East, with the exception of Israel, has virtually been emptied of its vibrant Jewish communities.
The Christian community is seeing great declines in numbers in this Cradle of Christianity. If the Middle East is emptied of the Christian faith, there will be grave geopolitical, and, I would argue, spiritual implications.
We have seen the Yezidi community in Iraq devastated, and there are 2500 Yezidi women taken by ISIS still missing. I have been to Mount Sinjar and visited Yezidis living in camps. I have spoken to mothers whose daughters are still missing.
So how can we not care about the Yezidis?
We see how bad things are for religious minorities in these countries, and for those who care about our national security here in the United States, we need to consider those threats that come from the region.
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The question is why should we be involved?
Why should this be a priority for Secretary Rubio, the State Department, and the Trump Administration?
And, what can be done?
In Ecclesiastes 4:1 it says,
“Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun; I saw the tears of the oppressed and they have no comforter, power was on the side of their oppressors, and they have no comforter.”
In Luke 4, Jesus said the Lord sent him,
“to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,” and “to release the oppressed.”
Are we in the West not burdened by the injustice of religious persecution in the Middle East? This is a Biblical mandate, not an option.
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Here are some ideas to consider that I believe will help Christians and other religious minorities and will help fight antisemitism.
1- Working together is so important and I hope you will continue this cooperation, especially when you consider the many lobbyists working for governments of these countries, spreading their influence.
So I believe you should expand your coalition to include other organizations and groups that share your concerns.
2- As a group ask for a meeting with Secretary Rubio to express your concerns. Secretary Rubio has always been supportive of the issue of international religious freedom. So this must be a priority for Secretary Rubio. Ask him to give you the name of a person on his staff that can be your contact, who you can call when you have a problem and through whom you can pass on information for Secretary Rubio.
3- Your group should ask for a meeting with President Trump and ask him to make this a priority. Ask who on the White House staff you can contact when you have an issue of concern.
4- You should also meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Both are men of faith and care about this issue. Ask them for their help.
As well, you should meet with the chairmen of the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees.
There was a caucus in the House that advocated for Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. I don’t know if the caucus is active now, but it should be reinvigorated, and Member of Congress should be encouraged to join it. There should be Congressional delegations that visit the Middle East to gain firsthand knowledge about religious persecution there.
5- I suggest a delegation from your groups travel to Rome to meet with the new Pope. I am sure Pope Leo cares about what happens in the Middle East, the Cradle of Christianity. I have just read a book by Paul Kengor, a professor at Grove City College, “A Pope and a President,” which is about how President Reagan and Pope John Paul worked together to defeat communism. Such an effort with the Trump Administration and the current Pope could work to help the people of the Middle East.
When Ronald Reagan was president, he always spoke out against persecution.
I urge you to read Kengor’s book, which lays out how this can be done.
6- You should send a letter to all religious leaders imploring them to advocate and speak out for Christians and other minority religions in the Middle East.
The church in the West must be involved. I have been disappointed in the lack of interest and action by the church.
During the Civil Rights movement, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King expressed it well:
“In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church…so often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound.”
7. After the International Religious Freedom legislation passed, there was a successful effort to have an international religious freedom Sunday once a year. Churches would invite someone from a persecuted country to educate and motivate their congregations to pray and to act. Unfortunately, this effort seems to have faded out. It needs to be started again.
8. Be involved in who the ambassadors are that are appointed in these countries—people who care about religious freedom.
On one visit I made to Egypt the Coptic Christians told me they didn’t feel comfortable going to the American Embassy because the embassy staff were not sympathetic to their concerns. I found the opposite reaction in Romania in the 80s where the Romanian Christians felt the American Embassy was an island of freedom and helped the Christian community.
This is how it should be today in our embassies in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and other countries where people of faith are being persecuted.
9. Last month there was an article in the Free Press entitled, “How Qatar Bought America”. Among other alarming facts, it states, “Qatar is the largest foreign funder of U.S. colleges and universities in the world, spending more than $6.3 billion on contracts and gifts since the government started tracking the date in 1986.”
Qatar should be banned from giving money to American universities and think tanks. They are spreading the seeds of antisemitism and we see the results on many college campuses. And it has spread to our society at large.
Three examples are the burning of Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro’s house, the killing of 2 people outside the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C., and the attack in Boulder, Colorado just the other day.
A look at history tells us how this happens. American involvement in World War II began in 1941. The war in Europe against the Nazis began in 1939. But the seeds of virulent antisemitism which led to the Holocaust were sown in the early 1930s by the Nazis. And the world stood by and did nothing.
On September 16, 2014, a few months before I left Congress I made a statement for the Congressional Record about the rise of antisemitism around the world.
I am alarmed by how many of the things I spoke about then have worsened.
A phrase not often heard outside the majority Muslim world is, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.” The Saturday people are, of course, the Jews and we see how their communities throughout Syria, Egypt and Iraq have been decimated.
A similar fate is happening to the ancient Christian communities, the Sunday people, in these lands.
In Iraq the remaining Christian population is being squeezed from its ancestral homeland in Nineveh and the surrounding areas. The Yezidi community is being treated poorly and forced from Iraq.
In Egypt Coptic Christians are being persecuted daily and are leaving in droves.
In Syria the Christian population has dramatically dropped, and other religious minorities are being threatened.
The new government leader has a strong background in terrorism as do others in that government.
We see the people in the Cradle of Christianity being persecuted and forced out. We see it every day.
There are two quotes which should resonate with us today.
In the 18th century, British parliamentarian William Wilberforce said this to his fellow countrymen about the evils of the slave trade:
“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you do not know.”
We cannot say that we don’t know what is going on.
The second quote is from a friend of German Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He said,
“Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Years ago, there was a slogan popular among Christian young people. It said, “What Would Jesus Do—WWJD.” They wore bracelets and Tee-shirts with the saying.
Obviously, things in our modern world are dramatically different than in Jesus’ days. Then there was no internet, no cell phones, no social media, no jet planes to travel the world. So we really should consider what would Jesus do if he were me in today’s world?
I believe Jesus would be helping the persecuted Christians and other religious minorities of the Middle East and opposing the hate of antisemitism.
The Trump Administration should be doing the same.
The State Department should be doing the same.
The Congress should be doing the same.
The Church should be doing the same.
And, we should all be doing the same.
We should be doing the same.
