Middle East Christians praise Trump for saving them

Fulani herdsman attack Christians in Nigeria (Facebook)

Representatives of religious minorities praised President Trump at a State Department event for his effort to save persecuted Christians and Yazidis in Iraq from genocide.

"The U.S. has always been a symbol of freedom for persecuted people around the world," Fr. Muntaser Haddad of the St. Ephrem Syriac Catholic Church told Breitbart News.

Haddad attended the three-day Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom summit in Washington, which ended Thursday.

"If minorities like Yazidis and Christians would have vanished from the Middle East, it would show the world the United States is not invested in promoting its values and a lot of people would lose hope," he said.

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Breitbart noted the U.S. government has officially determined that ISIS committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities during its reign of terror in the Middle East that began in 2014.

The Trump administration launched a multi-million-dollar program to help the victims.

In a speech during the event Wednesday, Fr. Thabet Habib Youssef, a Chaldean Catholic priest from Iraq's Nineveh province, expressed his appreciation.

"I wish to give thanks to the government of the United States for including us in this important conference and a special thanks to the administration of President Trump for his concern and commitment to the persecuted minority communities in Iraq," he said.

"I can say this conference gives us hope. Our greatest fear in the early years was that the world would forget us. This conference tells us we are not forgotten."

Christine Douglass-Williams commented at Jihad Watch that acknowledging the persecution of Christians and Yazidis means acknowledging "a major problem within Islamic countries" governed by Islamic law, or Shariah.

Christians, she said, "have been left virtually ignored."

"That is, until Donald Trump decided to step in."

She noted, however, that a Fox News report two months ago found Christian persecution in some areas was close to "genocide levels," according to the international definition, but was being largely ignored because of "political correctness."

"That's because Muslims are persecuting Christians at an alarming rate, and to report about human rights abuses in the name of Islam is considered to be 'Islamophobic,'" she wrote.

In Open Doors USA's annual report of persecution of Christians worldwide, all but two of the 16 worst persecutors were majority Muslim nations.