President Biden’s choice of Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.N. Ambassador is a disaster for persecuted Christians according to an article Thursday in the Christian Post.
Writer Hedieh Mirahmadi, a counter-terrorism expert and a convert from Islam to Christianity, declares that “Christian persecution may reach our own shores” if Thomas-Greenfield’s first official speech is an indicator of things to come.
In her address to the U.N. General Assembly last Friday, Thomas-Greenfield stumped for the Black Lives Matter movement and railed against systemic racism, insisting that “we need to dismantle white supremacy at every turn.”
“Racism is the problem of the racist. And it is the problem of the society that produces the racist. And in today’s world, that is every society,” she asserted.
“And in so many of our communities and countries, racism is endemic,” she continued. “It’s built in, like a rot in a frame. And it remains, and it festers, and it spreads because many of those in charge allow it to. Others look away and pretend it’s not there. But like a cancer, if ignored, it grows.”
Praising the 1619 Project, Thomas-Greenfield asserted that “slavery is the original sin of America. It’s weaved white supremacy and black inferiority into our founding documents and principles.”
Her embrace of the BLM agenda and attack on the American founding, Mirahmadi notes in Thursday’s essay, is just half the problem. The other half is the downgrading of religious freedom.
“The persecution of Christians in the Middle East and their mass slaughter in countries across Africa were noticeably absent from her remarks,” she observes.
While promoting religious freedom and thereby preventing persecution abroad became a fundamental part of U.S. foreign policy through the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, she adds, under the Obama administration, “the whole field of religious freedom took a back seat to LGBTQ issues.”
During those years, the Under-Secretary for Africa, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, pushed for reduced funding to agencies that “discriminated against the LGBTQ community,” she writes.
Over the last four years, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo elevated the Office of International Religious Freedom and commissioners “testified repeatedly before Congress about the plight of Christians throughout Africa and the Middle East and advocated for stricter policies towards these nations.”
“Arguably, the improving conditions of Christians in Egypt and Saudi Arabia can be attributed to the increased U.S. diplomatic pressure,” Mirahmadi states.
Now, the Biden administration is giving every indication of reverting to the errors of the Obama years in downplaying the importance of religious freedom and the defense of persecuted Christians, she suggests.
Based on her record, Thomas-Greenfield will focus her attention on racism and LGBT rights, putting religious freedom on a back burner.
Yet without the U.S. leading the diplomatic efforts to defend minority Christian communities, Mirahmadi argues, “the lives of these people are in grave danger.”