On January 27, 2026, Egypt’s Court of Cassation issued a ruling that the state then kept confidential for almost three months. The ruling overturned a 2020 Family Court decision that had recognized the marriage of an Egyptian Bahá’í couple who had been married since September 1981, forty-five years. The Egyptian public learned of the ruling in mid-April, when activists noticed that married Bahá’ís renewing their identity cards were being recorded as single.

Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution establishes Sharia as the principal source of legislation. Article 64 guarantees the freedom of religious rites only for adherents of the three heavenly religions, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Marriage is a religious rite. Bahá’ís are not adherents of a heavenly religion. Their marriages are therefore outside the legal framework that recognizes marriage at all.

A Bahá’í couple cannot register their marriage. Their children’s parentage is legally ambiguous. Pensions and inheritance pass through formal recognition that does not exist. Non-Egyptian spouses of Egyptian Bahá’ís cannot obtain family residency. Egyptian Bahá’í mothers cannot pass their citizenship to children they have with non-Egyptians, a right the state grants to every other Egyptian woman. The Bahá’í citizen is a citizen with the legal status of a stateless person inside his own country.

This ruling is the latest episode in a pattern that has run through the Egyptian state for almost a century. In 1948, the Egyptian Jewish community numbered approximately 80,000 people, descended from communities documented in Alexandria and Cairo since the Hellenistic period. After the founding of Israel, and especially after the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Nasser regime conducted a systematic campaign of dispossession, confiscation of property, revocation of citizenship, mass expulsions framed alternately as voluntary departures and as security measures. After 1967, the residual community was effectively eliminated. By 1970, fewer than a thousand Jews remained. Today, the Egyptian Jewish community of antiquity exists in diaspora.

Subscribe now

The Copts, the descendants of the pre-Islamic Christian population, whose church traces its founding to Saint Mark in the first century, six hundred years before the Arab conquest of 641 CE, were the majority of the Egyptian population at the time of the conquest. They are now estimated at roughly 10 percent. Coptic numerical decline across fourteen centuries has been the product of jizya pressure, social marginalization, intermittent violence, and the steady administrative friction of life as a tolerated minority. The friction has not stopped. Coptic churches have been bombed in Cairo, Alexandria, and Tanta within the last decade. Coptic girls continue to be kidnapped, forcibly converted, and forcibly married to Muslim men in a pattern the community has documented and the state has refused to address.

The Bahá’ís are now in the position the Jews were in before 1948 and the position the Copts have occupied for centuries. The community in Egypt dates to 1863. Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the faith, transited Egypt in August 1868 on his way from Adrianople to ʻAkká, with the ship stopping at Alexandria and Port Said. The first native Egyptian converts were recorded by 1896. In 1900, al-Azhar issued a fatwa declaring Bahá’ís infidels. In 1960, Nasser’s Decree 263 dissolved all Bahá’í institutions. In 1975, the Supreme Constitutional Court upheld the decree. In 2006, the Supreme Administrative Court banned the entry of Bahá’í in the religion field on identity documents. In 2009, the same court allowed a dash (–) in the religion field, the closest the Egyptian state has come to acknowledging that Egyptian Bahá’ís exist. The January 2026 ruling forecloses the last remaining legal pathway for state recognition of Bahá’í marriages.

The Bahá’í case matters beyond the Bahá’í community because it exposes the actual structure of Egyptian religious freedom. A community whose marriages are not recognized cannot pass property to children. A community whose family structure is administratively invisible has trouble registering children in schools and hospitals. The result is reduced fertility and accelerated emigration, with younger Egyptian Bahá’ís leaving for countries where their families will be recognized as families. The Egyptian Bahá’í community was, by mid-twentieth-century estimates, in the tens of thousands. It is now estimated at 2,000 to 7,000.

The world headquarters of the Bahá’í Faith is in Haifa, in the State of Israel. The Shrine of the Báb sits on the slopes of Mount Carmel, surrounded by terraced gardens that draw nearly a million visitors a year. The Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the faith, operates from a building of marble and Corinthian columns overlooking the Mediterranean. The shrine of Bahá’u’lláh himself, the founder of the faith, sits at the Mansion of Bahjí near Acre, where he died in 1892 and where Bahá’ís from around the world come on pilgrimage. The Israeli state protects these sites, funds their preservation, and treats the Bahá’í presence in Haifa as one of the cultural and architectural treasures of the country.

Israeli Bahá’ís marry, raise children, pass property, and worship without administrative interference of any kind. Across the border, in Egypt, the Bahá’í couple of forty-five years cannot register their marriage. In Iran, the country of the faith’s origin, Bahá’ís are imprisoned, executed, and stripped of property under formal state policy. Across the broader Islamic world, the same pattern repeats. The faith that the Islamic world has spent a century-and-a-half persecuting is the faith that the one Jewish state protects, honors, and shelters.

Subscribe now

The West, which criticizes Israel for its alleged sins against minorities, has shown no equivalent interest in the actual condition of religious minorities in the Islamic states that surround Israel. This is a scandal.

Muhamad Saad Khairalla is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

What Is IDI ?

The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.

Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

Support IDI

Armed Islamic groups were filmed on motorbikes while they were bragging about storming the Christian town of Al-Suqaylabiyah. They greeted the passing General Security vehicles, who did nothing to intervene, according to a 27 March post by the X account @GrecoLevantines.

See another video here showing Islamic mobs loyal to Syria’s new regime attacking Christian properties in Al-Suqaylabiyah.

This is the latest outbreak of deadly jihadist violence in the country following al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS)-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces overthrew Syria’s Assad regime in December 2024 with the help of Turkey.

The new Islamic regime of Syria, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), the former head of the Syrian al-Qaeda, has since systematically led the targeting, abduction, and massacring of Druze, Christians, Alawites, and other ethnoreligious minorities.

The Islamic violence conducted against these communities by HTS military units and affiliated militias has resulted in the deaths or enforced disappearances of thousands of people.

Abu Mohammed al-Julani previously rose through the ranks of ISIS (Islamic State). In 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then head of ISIS, sent al-Julani into Syria. There Julani founded an al-Qaeda affiliate: Jabhat al-Nusra. HTS was, until recently, listed as a terrorist group by the US. Julani had fought US troops in Iraq and was jailed by the Americans for several years.

Subscribe now

HTS is still designated as terrorists by the UN, EU, and the UK because of its ties with ISIS and al-Qaeda.

On 22 March 2026, EALA (the Ethnikos Association of Latakia-Antaradus) issued an urgent briefing regarding the escalating attacks and threats against Christians in Western and coastal Syria.

The organization said that the Christians in Kfarbo, Mhardeh, Al-Suqaylabiyah, Wadi al-Nasara (Valey of Christians), and surrounding areas were assaulted by armed groups affiliated with the new “Ministry of Defense” of Syria:

“The armed Bedouin groups, operating alongside or under the effective control of government-affiliated forces, have entered the Christian towns of Kfarbo, Mhardeh, [and] Al-Suqaylabiyah, where they are actively carrying out armed robberies, destruction of Christian cultural and religious symbols, as well as vandalism and desecration of cemeteries across all three towns.”

EALA noted that “the Church of the Holy Martyrs has been converted into a military site, and Christian religious symbols have been deliberately destroyed. Armed Bedouins are consistently harassing, threatening, and terrorizing Christian residents, including issuing explicit threats. Multiple attempted abductions of Christian girls have been reported. These attempts were only prevented by the intervention of local civilians. A Christian family in Kharbeh was robbed at gunpoint inside their home. Armed perpetrators held the family at gunpoint while looting the house.”

EALA called for “immediate withdrawal and removal of all irregular and affiliated armed elements from the vicinity of churches, Christian towns, and civilian areas in Mhardeh, Kfarbo, and Al-Suqaylabiyah; full demilitarization of the Church of the Holy Martyrs, the Shrine of Saint George and all surrounding compounds, with their immediate return to civilian and religious use; and deployment of neutral forces or locally recruited community-based civilian protection structures.”

The “Greco-Syrian Nation,” an online platform that advocates for the human rights of the Greeks and other indigenous peoples of Syria, has called the attack against Al-Suqaylabiyah “a crime against our people, our faith, and our right to exist”:

“What transpired in Al-Suqaylabiyah was not a spontaneous disturbance, but a coordinated and deeply alarming act of hate. Armed groups from the neighboring Sunni villages of Qalaat al-Madiq (Ἀπάμεια) and Al-Asharinah— operating with the shameful complicity or outright protection of the so-called ‘General Security Service’ - descended on Al-Suqaylabiyah in organized waves, unleashing chaos and terror.

“These savages — self-styled followers of al-Julani — stormed our streets like vandals from the darkest ages. Armed men roamed freely, firing into the air, issuing threats, and filming their crimes—all while so-called ‘security forces’ stood by, either unwilling or unable to intervene. They smashed our shops and cafés, burned our homes, and beat innocent civilians in the open. They even desecrated a statue of the Holy Virgin Mary, a symbol of our Christian faith. What began as the harassment of our daughters and young men on Al-Meshwar Street exploded into a coordinated pogrom designed to terrorize, loot, and break the will of a peaceful Rûm (Ρωμαϊκή) city.

“Let us be clear: this is ethnoreligious targeting. This is an existential threat. The events in Al-Suqaylabiyah are part of a broader pattern aimed at uprooting the Christian presence from its ancestral homeland through fear, violence, and forced displacement. The message being sent is unmistakable: leave, submit, or face annihilation.”

Reports from the country confirm that Syria’s jihadist regime and affiliated groups are escalating their campaign of persecution and violence against Christians. This follows previous massacres committed by Julani’s forces towards the Alawites and Druze.

In March 2025, regime forces attacked the Alawite-dominated coastal areas of Syria, massacring hundreds, abducting women, and turning them into sex slaves. According to Reuters, a photo from Sonobar, confirmed by two surviving Alawites from the town, showed a message scrawled on the wall of one home: “You were a minority, and now you are a rarity.”

In July 2025, the Druze towns in southern Syria were attacked by Islamic groups led by Julani. The violence erupted in the predominantly Druze city in the province of Suwayda (also known as Sweida) on 12 July, two days after a Druze merchant was reportedly abducted on the highway to Damascus. Large numbers of civilians (mainly the Druze), as well as children, were massacred by Muslims. Many cases were filmed and posted by perpetrators on social media. Hundreds of Druze women and children were abducted. Today, many remain missing.

In September 2025, Father Tony Al Boutros of St. Philip Greek Catholic Church announced the destruction which the Julani regime had inflicted upon the 36 villages in his hometown of Suweyda. He said those villages were attacked by Julani’s forces and Bedouin tribes, violating the Druze and Christians, destroying homes, burning churches, terrorizing the whole population, and forcibly displacing them.

Subscribe now

“They did not leave a house in any area they reached without stealing, burning, destroying and violating human dignity by assaulting women, the elderly, and children,” the bishop said in his open letter:

“All residents of these 36 villages, both Christians and Druze, were displaced and moved to schools, homes, churches, clubs, and public parks, where they remain refugees to this day. More than 1,500-2,000 civilians were killed in this aggression. Many citizens were also executed in the field simply because they belonged to a different sect or religion. Women, children, and the elderly were attacked in a barbaric manner unprecedented in human history.”

The situation of the St. Michael’s Church in As-Sawara al-Kubra, one of six churches vandalized during the regime’s assault on the province, was documented by Father Boutros. He confirmed that “even the graves weren’t spared, a disgrace to humanity.”

Benedict Kiely, a Priest of the Ordinariate and founder of the Nasarean organization, told IDI,

“It is incomprehensible why western Christians are silent in the face of the ongoing persecution of Syrian Christians. I often think of the words of Jan Figel, for EU Commissioner for Religious Freedom, that ‘ignorance and indifference are allies of evil.’ Perhaps many are ignorant, far worse if they are indifferent.

“Rather than greeting Al Julani warmly and spraying him with perfume, the Trump administration should make any aid contingent upon the freedom and protection for all religious minorities. The current U.S. Ambassador to Syria should also be replaced.”

Kostas A. Lavdas, a Professor of European and Comparative Politics, told IDI that the support that Julani’s regime obtains from several governments should be understood in the wider context:

“It could only come as a surprise to those who took at face value the declarations regarding a ‘rules-based order’ that was supposed to provide the normative framework regulating international interactions. In fact, what we have today is the à la carte intensification of aspects of international behavior that were always in supply by security providers, the east and the west. Julani’s role at this moment is seen as instrumental in two ways, one dealing with present stability and another with US interests, until a better option presents itself. First, maintaining the basic border scheme and the general spirit of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. Neither the US nor Europe are ready for the breakup of Syria at this moment. Second, the perception in Washington is that the Julani regime will be positive regarding US plans to take part in further exploiting the oil and gas sector in Syria. Months ago, Reuters reported that American firms were working on an ‘energy master plan’ on Syria.”

Today, Syria is a Sunni-Muslim majority country. The 2012 Syrian Constitution stipulates that the president must be Muslim and Islamic law is a major source of legislation. This provides a constitutional basis for discriminatory treatment of non-Muslims.

However, indigenous Christians (of Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian descent) have lived in Syria for thousands of years. Most of Syria’s Christians belong to historical churches (mainly Orthodox and Catholic, plus some traditional Protestant congregations).

Syria was a majority-Christian country and was part of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire before Muslim Arabs invaded in the seventh century. After the Muslim conquest of this region in 634 AD, Christians and other non-Muslims lived for centuries as oppressed, beleaguered “dhimmis” who were allowed to retain their religion in exchange for a high poll tax, also known as “jizya.”

Today, while religious and ethnic communities in Syria are facing an actual genocide at the hands of the Julani regime, Julani is received by Western heads of state who ignore the fact that he is a jihadist terrorist.

While Julani was addressing the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York on 24 September 2025, his regime in Syria was burning Christian-owned homes, villages, and forests in what is known as the Valley of Christians.

In their recent statement, the “Greco-Syrian Nation” announced that they “call upon Greece — as our ethnic and civilizational kin — to take an unequivocal stand. We urge Greek political leadership to raise this issue at the highest international levels, to demand accountability and concrete measures to shield Al-Suqaylabiyah and every Rûm [Greek] village from further barbarism.

“We also call upon the international community and all civilized nations that claim to uphold human rights to condemn this attack in the clearest terms. Silence in the face of such violence is complicity. Immediate measures must be taken to protect civilians in Al-Suqaylabiyah and across Syria, to hold perpetrators accountable, and to guarantee that the Rûm and all indigenous communities can live in safety and dignity in their own homeland.

“History is watching. The world must decide whether it will stand by as another ancient Christian community is driven to extinction—or whether it will act, decisively and without delay.”

Uzay Bulut is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

What Is IDI ?

The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.

Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

Support IDI

Today, the entity known as Greater Lebanon is effectively controlled by the Shiite nation. Nabih Berri holds the real political power, while Hezbollah controls the military power. Figures such as Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam function largely as placeholders. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Army remains paralyzed and largely ineffective, as it has always been.

Greater Lebanon is not a unified nation. It is composed of four distinct nations.

If the Shiites negotiate a peace agreement on behalf of everyone, it will inevitably prioritize the interests of the Shiite nation. The Sunni nation will not remain passive either. Backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Sunni leadership will ensure its interests are protected in any negotiations. The result would likely become a de facto Israeli–Islamic agreement rather than a balanced and equitable deal for all.

Subscribe now

The Druze factor must also be considered. The influential Druze nation in the Golan Heights within Israel would never allow their Lebanese brethren to be marginalized.

This leaves the Christian nation, whose largest component is the Maronite people.

Today, most Christian political leaders have become vassals to either Shiite or Sunni power structures. With no Western Christian sponsor willing to advocate for them, Lebanese Christians are left dependent on the goodwill of regional powers such as Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Under such circumstances, the best-case outcome for Lebanese Christians under Islamic political dominance would be relegation to a form of dhimmi status. The worst case could be far darker, see Syria.

This reality ultimately places the future of the Christians of Mount Lebanon greatly in Israel’s hands.

In the absence of effective Maronite leadership within Lebanon, Israel faces two strategic options.

Option One: Pursue a short-term approach and conclude a quick peace deal with the current Shiite-led Lebanese structure. Such a deal may last three or four decades. But history shows that when circumstances change, Muslim political factions tend to unite against Israel. A supportive American administration may not always be present.

Option Two: Pursue a sustainable, long-term peace framework by engaging directly with the Christian nation of Mount Lebanon, bypassing the current Christian political figures who have lost popular legitimacy and whose mandates are nearing expiration without elections scheduled.

Israel can choose to engage with the Christian Mount Lebanese resistance, currently operating from New York, much like Charles de Gaulle led the French resistance from London during the Nazi occupation. Or it can choose the easier path: making a fragile agreement with what would effectively resemble a Vichy-style government in Lebanon.

The choice is not for history to judge, it must be made now. Israel must choose wisely today.

By https://x.com/fredbeltran604

_____________________________

* “Greater Lebanon” refers to the political entity established by France in 1920, which expanded Mount Lebanon to include surrounding regions with significant Sunni, Shiite, and Druze populations. The term distinguishes this construct from the historically Maronite-dominated Mount Lebanon.

What Is IDI ?

The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.

Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

Support IDI

To achieve this objective, the regime reorganized the entire education system—from elementary school through the university level—to reflect an Islamic curriculum. The media was seized and repurposed to promote the ideological worldview of the new state, while censorship protocols were implemented and later extended into the digital age.

Even infrastructure became a tool of indoctrination. Electricity was expanded to smaller towns and villages not only as a development project but also to ensure that television broadcasts and religious programming could reach every corner of the country.

Yet four decades later the result has been the opposite of what the revolution intended.

Subscribe now

Iran today is experiencing a profound cultural shift marked by mass de-Islamization. Public trust in the clerical establishment has eroded, and growing segments of society reject not only the ruling clergy but also the religious framework that legitimizes their authority. Christianity is widely reported to be growing rapidly, Zoroastrianism—the pre-Islamic faith of ancient Persia—has experienced a revival, and atheism and agnosticism are increasingly common among younger generations.

Several structural factors explain why the project of Islamization ultimately failed.

First, Iran possesses a deep civilizational identity that predates Islam by millennia. The arrival of Islam did not erase Persian civilization; it layered itself upon it. Beneath the Islamic veneer, the memory of Iran’s ancient identity remained alive.

Persian language, literature, philosophy, and historical consciousness continued to shape Iranian society. Historians often describe this dynamic as cycles of “Persianization,” in which external systems are gradually absorbed and reshaped by Iran’s underlying civilizational character.

This civilizational memory re-emerged dramatically after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, when protests erupted across the country and large numbers of Iranians flocked to Persepolis—the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire—to reconnect with their pre-Islamic heritage.

Second, Iranian nationalism proved stronger than Islamist universalism.

Iran historically functioned as an imperial civilization that governed vast territories through strong political cohesion and a powerful sense of national identity. Khomeini’s revolutionary ideology attempted to subordinate that identity to the concept of the Islamic Ummah, a transnational religious community.

For many Iranians, however, this required abandoning their civilizational heritage. The attempt to redefine Iranian identity primarily in Islamic terms collided with a deeply rooted sense of national pride. In the end, Iranian nationalism proved stronger than ideological Islamism.

Third, technological and social change opened Iranian society to the world.

Satellite television, the internet, and global communications exposed the younger, post-revolutionary generation to life beyond Iran’s ideological isolation. A growing middle class gained access to travel, global culture, and new ideas.

Many began to see Iran not as a revolutionary outpost but as one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations—one that should be building modern global cities comparable to London, Paris, Shanghai, or Tokyo rather than remaining locked within a revolutionary ideological framework centered on the cult of the Mahdi.

Fourth, the imposition of religion ignited a deeper spiritual search.

Initial exposure to the Bible often came through the Iranian diaspora, as families living abroad shared the scriptures with relatives inside the country. As curiosity grew, organized ministries and distribution networks began importing Bibles into Iran, and by many accounts they struggled to keep up with the demand.

Among a population historically drawn to poetry, philosophy, and spiritual inquiry, these encounters opened new theological debates. As alternative ideas spread, the ideological foundations that once united Islamism and revolutionary Marxism within Iran’s revolutionary narrative began to weaken.

The result has been a diversification of belief systems across Iranian society: renewed interest in Zoroastrianism, the rise of agnosticism and atheism, more moderate forms of Islam, and the growth of Christianity.

Ironically, while these ideologies have weakened inside Iran, elements of Islamism and revolutionary Marxism have gained influence in parts of the West—often through academic institutions and activist networks influenced by similar ideological currents.

Iran’s experience offers an important lesson.

Societies confronting ideological radicalism cannot defeat it solely through political or security measures. They must also reconnect with their own civilizational foundations.

For the West, this means rediscovering the civilizational framework that shaped its institutions in the first place. The biblical worldview that influenced Western law, philosophy, and moral reasoning helped produce a culture that values freedom of conscience, open debate, and the right of individuals to question authority.

These principles allowed Western societies to cultivate intellectual pluralism rather than enforce ideological conformity.

The Iranian experience suggests that ideological systems—whether Islamist or Marxist—lose their grip when people rediscover both their civilizational identity and the freedom to think, debate, and question.

A living, informed Christianity combined with the protection of freedom of conscience may therefore prove one of the most powerful cultural antidotes to ideological authoritarianism.

Ali Siadatan is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

What Is IDI ?

The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.

Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

Support IDI