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The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) yesterday released a "Statement of Conscience" concerning worldwide religious persecution. The first version of this statement was released on January 23, 1996. At a time of little concern for religious persecution, this statement helped bring new attention to Christians harassed, arrested, or killed for their faith. In the summer of 1996, Christianity Today senior news writer Kim A. Lawton wrote on the crisis of the persecuted church.

Hussein Qambar Ali, who has been a Christian for less than two years, found his life on the line in Kuwait, a nation where the state religion of Islam opposes conversion by its citizens.

Hussein, who uses the Christian name Robert, could be executed after his conviction for apostasy in a Kuwaiti Islamic court May 29. The religious court recommended that Hussein, a Muslim by birth, should be killed because of his conversion to Christianity. According to local reports, the court also said his marriage should be dissolved and all his possessions be distributed to his heirs. The ruling says that the supreme Muslim ruler, or imam, would have the sole authority to carry out the execution.

Hussein remains in hiding as he fears for his life. An apostasy conviction is unprecedented in modern Kuwait. It is not an explicit crime under Kuwait's legal system, although the constitution stipulates that Shari'ah (Islamic law) is the basis for all Kuwaiti laws. Some Islamic societies, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, interpret Shari'ah to mandate the death penalty for apostates.

"Apostasy in the Islamic world is serious," Hussein told Christianity Today in a telephone interview. "Anyone, even an ordinary person, has the right to kill me without any penalty."

Hussein went public about his conversion last December when he told Kuwaiti newspapers that his estranged wife refused to let him visit his two children because he had embraced Christianity. After publication of the interviews, three lawyers filed a private suit charging Hussein with apostasy. He soon began receiving death threats. Western missionary groups estimate that fewer than 300 Kuwaiti nationals in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country are Christians. "Why should I pay the heavy price because of my beliefs?" Hussein asks.

Kuwait is one of many nations where Christians are particularly subject to religious discrimination and persecution. Although there are 1.7 billion Christians worldwide, they are a religious minority in 87 countries and territories.

Increasingly, Christians are harassed, arrested, interrogated, fined, imprisoned, or killed because of their religious beliefs and practices, including spreading the faith, which is discouraged or outlawed by some governments.

In southern Sudan, Christian women and children are routinely sold into slavery, and there are persistent reports of crucifixions of Christians in remote areas. Provincial officials in northern Laos closed all known Catholic and Protestant churches last year, forcing church leaders to sign affidavits promising not to engage in religious activities. In Cuba, popular Pentecostal pastor Orson Vila remains under house arrest for conducting worship services in his back yard.

"Christians are in fact the most persecuted religious group in the world today, with the greatest number of victims," asserts Nina Shea, director of Freedom House's Puebla Program on Religious Freedom.

Several factors have complicated the problem of religious freedom for Christians worldwide. Christianity has become a global force with more than half of its believers living outside developed countries. Experts say that the "nonwhite indigenous church" in Asia, Africa, and Latin America is the fastest growing among major Christian groupings. This rapid gain among nonwhite Christians is occurring in countries without a history of religious pluralism.

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April (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46