Special to WorldTribune.com

Iran and Saudi Arabia were listed among the worst state violators of religious freedom in a report released last week by the U.S. State Department.

The Religious Freedom Report (IRF), released on Oct. 14, said that Iran continued its severe crackdown on Sunni Muslims while Saudi did the same with minority Shi’ites.

In Iran, “non-Muslims faced substantial societal discrimination, aided by official support,” the report said. “The government discriminated against all religious minority groups in employment, education, and housing. Government rhetoric and actions created a threatening atmosphere for all non-Shia religious groups, most notably for Bahais.”

The Saudi government “sentenced to death at least one prominent Shia cleric and arrested several individuals who publicly criticized discrimination against Shia citizens,” the IRF said.

The report, which is mandated by Congress, also detailed the rise of terrorist attacks against Middle East and African Christians. The IRF specifically mentioned the executions by Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) of 21 Coptic Christians near the Mediterranean as well as the kidnapping of 165 Christian girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram.

“[N]on-state actors, including rebel and terrorist organizations, … committed by far some of the most egregious human rights abuses and caused significant damage to the global status of respect for religious freedom,” the report said.

Secretary of State John Kerry echoed those concerns at a press conference: “One of the more consequential facts of our era has been the … development of a sort of new phenomenon of non-state actors who, unlike the last century and the violence that we saw and persecution that we saw that emanated from states, are now the principal persecutors and preventers of religious tolerance and practice.

“Most prominent, and most harmful, obviously, has been the rise of international terrorist groups such as Daesh [ISIL], Al Qaida, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram. And all have been guilty of vicious acts of unprovoked violence.”

The U.S. has been criticized for failing to help persecuted religious minorities overseas, but Kerry said that “there isn’t a single day that we are not doing more and more.”

“The concept of religious freedom extends way beyond mere tolerance,” Kerry said. “It is a concept grounded in respect for the rights and beliefs of others. It is deeply connected to our DNA as Americans.”

  Religious Freedom Report, U.S. State Department, What Iran and Saudi Arabia have in common: Both again cited as worst violators of religious freedom, WorldTribune.com