AFRICA/EGYPT - US praise the Egyptian government's religious policy

Thursday, 5 November 2020 middle east   oriental churches   religious freedom   persecutions   geopolitics  

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi "has taken many initiatives in the field of religious freedom, affirming that all Egyptians are citizens with equal rights, regardless of their religious affiliation, and has done things that we have never seen in Egypt, such as how to increase the construction of churches", said Samah Norquist, the current first religious freedom advisor to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in a television interview.
The considerations expressed by the senior USAID official come at the end of the visit made to Egypt by a delegation of the US Government Agency, founded in 1965 by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy as a multifunctional tool to support US international policies for the development and empowerment of democratic societies. During the visit of the USAID delegation to Egypt, the first advisor also praised and thanked al-Sisi for the construction of the "Church of Martyrs", which is dedicated to the Copts executed in Libya, and underlined that no religious group in Egypt is currently suffering from religious persecution.
During the mandate of the current US administration, led by Donald Trump, federal agencies have been directed to collaborate with religious groups and private organizations on religious freedom issues, which serve as a fundamental "principle" of US foreign policy to protect and consolidate national security. (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 5/11/2020)


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