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I've been doing a bit of a spring reset lately. Less about adding, more about clearing out what I don't actually need. Just trying to keep things simple. Better quality and things I actually want to use every day, whether that's in my closet or around the house. That's how I ended up trying Quince. I got their bamboo sheets and you notice it right away. They're soft, not flimsy, and they stay cool, which, if you're in Florida, that really matters. It's one of those small upgrades that actually makes a difference. Quint does the same with their clothing. They focus on materials. European linen, organic cotton, solid denim without the insane markup you're paying for. Something that actually holds up the. They work directly with ethical factories, and you can tell there's intention behind everything they make. It's not just fast stuff you cycle through. For me, it's about fewer things that actually feel worth it. And this is one of those. Refresh your bedding and spring wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.com watch for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Go to quints.com watch for free shipping and 360 five day returns. Again, that's quint.com watch. Welcome to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Palm Sunday celebrated all around the world. There's supposed to be a moment of peace, reflection and faith. But this year, in some regions, it unfolded under the shadow of persecution. Let it be violent or instability or just like government control over the situation. When we look at global religious freedoms and who is being impacted today, you know, not all disruptions are equal. And we need to focus on, obviously the ones of most concern because that's where we need to target help and support and awareness. Some situations impacting Christians can be temporary, right? We have this, you know, you know, ongoing conflict with Iran. So that leads to security realities that are now in place that might not have been placed a year ago. Right? Temporary, but others are sustained, they're targeted, and they unfortunately lead to deadly consequences. And today I want to talk about kind of the contrast between the two. So it's clear. And we're going to focus on not just where risks are present, but more importantly where they are persistent. Across the world, Christian communities are facing increased pressure. And it can come from a number of different things. Obviously from terrorist groups, which I spend a lot of time on. State control, state regulations is another big problem. And then just societal tensions, right? There could be problems in the economy, control over farming, all these type of issues, droughts. Right. We talked about that previously in Mozambique. A lot of different factors can come into place here and impact Christians. Right. But we want to talk mostly today about the parts that bring in the violence. So according to the Open Doors world watch list for 2026, they say more than 30,388 million Christians are under high levels of persecution globally. I mean, that's a huge number. That's actually one in seven believers. So when we say, you know, religious freedom is under threat, that's a fact. Right. There are numbers to back it. This isn't just some crazy conspiracy theory out there and people are worried over nothing. Like, there are a lot of people in harm's way, and they really are asking for help and support and for people to be aware of what is actually happening. And we do have this problem where attention and pressure and the issues we care about are all over the place. And lots of times these concerns really do get forgotten about. There are some companies you talk about because you like the product, and there are some companies you talk about because of who they are. Are. This is both. 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That matters to me. Live better, longer. For a limited time, our listeners get 20% off at Bubs naturals using code watch at checkout. Just go to Bubsnaturals.com and you're all set. And after checkout, let them know the watch floor sent you. So today we're going to kind of understand the difference and really focus on the places where you see the impacts. And of course, if you want to understand the issue where it's most acute, you have to start with Nigeria. While it doesn't get the attention it deserves, Nigeria is the number one country in the world where Christians are persecuted the most because it's like ongoing and, and it for them feels like it never stops. Okay. This is a constant problem they're going through. So just on Palm Sunday, there are multiple coordinated attacks across the plateau state. And you know, the numbers are still coming in, but we're seeing anywhere from like a dozen to over 20 killed, probably well over 100 displaced. We have people who were kidnapped. We have people who lost their homes. A huge problem. And a lot of this occurs like in the middle belt in Nigeria. If you're kind of new to understanding the problem there, these attacks follow a similar pattern. So first we have this issue where armed groups show up. Now, when you talk about Nigeria, you have a lot of people that use the term armed groups. And I'm using it for a reason. First off, there is this problem when, yes, this is clearly terrorism against these Christians, but how kind of the international community works, they mostly only call it terrorism if it's by a designated terrorist group. So if this is maybe like 10 to 15% of the attacks by like Boko Haram or ISIS that occur in Nigeria, then it's called terrorism. We prioritize it and we're helping the Nigerian government deal with that small section of attacks. But the majority of the attacks, well over 50% to include the ones that occurred on Palm Sunday are by the Fulani militants. They're also Islamists, but they are not a designated terrorist group, so they don't get the same focus. And because no one really effectively has helps target them, they continue this violence unabated. And like I said, there's very small efforts then that are more focused on ISIS in Nigeria, not dealing with the biggest chunk of the problem. We just have to be honest about it. So these groups come in, and then they burn homes. They'll target individual Christians, especially ones who might be more outspoken, more public, maybe the pastor, et cetera. And that's how these things unfold. It's very simple. One of the survivors of, you know, the attacks on Palm Sunday said this. We ran into the bush with nothing. When we came back, everything was gone. Our homes, our church, our people. And you could take that phrase anytime over the last eight to 10 years, and it sounds the exact same way. And so we have this problem, right? We have people killed, homes and churches burned. Massive displacement, you know, and it's hard to get any help or support because there's not like some security force that comes in after the fact, helps protect them, you know, when they're in this vulnerable situation. So it just keeps repeating, and it occurs again and again. Do you ever feel like something is off? You're hitting the gym, you're crushing your goals, you're showing up every single day? Or if you notice a change in your partner, slower recovery time, less focus, and a drive that used to be there that just isn't. It's subtle, but it's real. Most people don't understand that testosterone naturally decreases 1% every year over the age of 30. Think about it. That slow change really does make workouts harder. It makes the workday longer, and it can make life more exhausting. That's where Marsman comes in. Your body produces testosterone, but sometimes it's just locked up. Think about it like this. You have money in the bank, but your debit card's not working. 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For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts when they go to men. GoTomars.com it's literally the perfect way to continue the gains that you kicked off at the start of New year's. Again, that's men. G-O T O mars.com to get your 50% off and your three free gifts. And at checkout, let them know the watch floor sent you. Now if we zoom out, you know, tens of thousands of Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009 and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. And we have all these groups involved. It could be ISIS or Boko Haram or the Fulanis. It doesn't matter though, because it gets labeled a number of different things, right? You can label that terrorism, it gets labeled insurgency, it gets labeled intercommunal conflict. But regardless of the wording, it's just the problem never gets solved, right? The Christians, especially these farming communities, because that's really kind of the population you're seeing across this middle belt. They're constantly and repeatedly exposed to this violence. So just think of it as something that never ends. It's ongoing. And that's why I say, hey, we need to talk about the issues that are persistent because if we don't focus on them, they are never going to end. And that's what the people feel like in Nigeria. Now, if we move into another major issue that's occurring, of course we have to bring up Syria. We saw justice Palm Sunday again, Christian communities targeted. Now in Syria, the issue is a little bit of a different model. We have obviously this prolonged conflict, a civil war that went on for 10 years. And then we have this political complexity of the fact that Islamists took over the government and they have other goals, right? They want a society, society based around Islam being in the schools. You know, they don't want these minorities to continue on with their populations. They would prefer, right. If you convert or you leave. And so it's making it very difficult for these communities because they don't exactly have some sort of internal support structure because the security forces are half made up of terrorists who don't want them there in the first place. And there's no, like, protection against persecution. Right? I mean, terrorists don't view this world the same way we do. It's not like they are going to put you in some sort of court process. They'll just go, they'll take you home, they'll burn your business, they'll put you on a bus and send you away. Right. It's a very different mentality than we have. And I think a lot of people aren't paying attention to the truth that's happening in Syria. And maybe because they don't want to, we have ignored Syria for over a decade. But it's also because our governments kind of leaned in and said, hey, this is the model of peace in the Middle east. And they're overselling something. That's not true. It's not what's occurring on the ground. The other problem is the press. So we have the president of Syria, of course, Abu Muhammad Al Jilani. He goes by his little fake name now, Ahmed Al Shari. And he'll travel to places. He came to our White House. He's now in Germany. He. And he sucks in all the media attention. If you ever notice, when he takes these international trips, like he's doing now to Germany, that's when you see an uptick in ethnic violence. You know, over the last year, we've had four different instances of ethnic cleansing in Syria. Thousands have been killed. And look how often you see the press report on it. It never happens. The recent incident that occurred just as Palm Sunday was like, in a old historic Christian community called Sulay Kabiya. And it was targeted, right? Because, of course, that's where Christians are known to settle. And it was to put pressure on them on their religious holiday. If you're not aware, actually, most of the Christian communities in Syria had already canceled Palm Sunday celebrations because they didn't want these regime officials and their terrorist buddies, like, showing up, you know, and doing attacks against the proceedings to begin with. So they already had to mute, you know, their celebrations for Palm Sunday, but it didn't matter. They still came and attacked their homes and their businesses. And it's just this frustrating thing where these Christians in Syria, they cannot gain any ground. You know, if you actually look back to the past, before the Syrian civil war, Christians were actually 10% of the population of Syria. And of course, if we go way back in history, there were a lot more. So they were about 1.5 to 2 million people. Right now there is only about 300,000, they say, max, 700,000 Christians in Syria But a lot have left in the last year, right? So we're getting to the point where this is going to be a very small population. And if. If Giuliani gets his way and does create this Islamic caliphate in Syria, you know, we might actually see Christianity completely wiped out in Syria. Right? So this is a problem. And again, another place where this is going to be persistent for these Christians as long as they have to live under this terrorist regime. So, in contrast, another issue became really popular on Palm Sunday. And I want to bring it up to you and show it to you kind of in the context of everything going on, because it was, I'd say, exaggerated. You know, it was the fact that in the Old City in Jerusalem, you know, the government had to kind of put these different restrictions on places of worship because Iranian missiles have been targeting, you know, that region and the location. So what they said is, if you have a bomb shelter, you know, you can remain open. You need to keep, you know, your services restricted to 50 people, right, to keep this as safe as possible. But if you don't have a bomb shelter, you have to clear close your place of worship. It doesn't matter, right, if this was a Christian location or a mosque. It all had the same rules. Well, of course, it came up on Palm Sunday. One of the churches that wanted to be used was closed. Now, it ended up being an issue that was solved pretty quickly. But a lot of people started calling this Christian persecution when we really had people dying in Nigeria and Syria at the same time. And think about it, if the Israeli government left all these churches open and they were full capacity and the missiles came in and killed people, then what would also that be called? So in times of war, a government's sole purpose and their sole goal is to protect their civilians in country, on the ground, right? There are going to be security restrictions, and we have to understand that in. And not call it something else when it's not like in this case. So that was a temporary restriction, right? Not persecution. And I do think we do need to go through multiple parts of the world and just talk through, you know, where life is difficult to be a Christian. So we really get this broader sense and this broader view, because sometimes we're only seeing the topics people like, like have outrage over and everything else gets ignored and not focused on. And I want us to do a good job of really being well rounded on these topics. So you can have disruption of a religious event, right? That's temporary. And then in locations, there's real persistent problems that are long Term consequences. So first I want to go to India. Now, in India, there is a lot of pressure on the Christian communities. A lot is to do with nationalism and then some of these security mandates put in place. So the biggest issue in India is they have, like, put in this law that you can't do these conversions. And it's in 11 different states now. You can just claim someone did a forced conversion, for example, to Christianity and kind of push the limits of the law. But as you can imagine, this has led to a lot of talk, targeted persecutions. So, you know, this is a 2024 number, but there was over 700 incidents targeting Christians, which included assaults on churches, individuals, there's vandalism, you know, and every year, this keeps increasing. Now, in India, the Christian community is pretty small. It's only about two to two and a half percent of the population. But because of, like, these conversion laws, it's focused on the Christian religion. And they feel, as you can imagine, that they're persecuted at a lot higher numbers. So these incidents include, you know, when the state and law enforcement gets involved, church disruptions, arrests, unfortunately, people start to mob these locations, you get mob violence, and it's all just over claims of forced conversion. It's not always the case where there is a forced conversion. And these allegations can really turn into kind of immediate effects. And some of those effects have had deadly consequences. Now let's move on to Mozambique. Obviously, Mozambique has a continued problem and insurgency due to isis. Now, the state has this ongoing humanitarian crisis because of the tariffs, but also because of this massive problem problems they have with flooding. And since 2017, more than 1.3 million people have been forced or displaced out of their homes in the country. Right. So they're living in temporary locations. And most of that's to do with the fact that their homes or their churches or their villages were targeted by these terrorists. You know, monitoring groups indicate that hundreds of Christians have been targeted and killed and. And attacks a lot really have been these church burnings. And the terrorists like to focus on the areas of Cabo Delgado and kind of the neighboring provinces. These are waves of violence, and they continue to occur. And they uproot these families in these communities. And so these survivors are, like, displaced. Like they don't have a home. And they're always looking for, like, shelter and food and protection. Right. This persistent threat that just hasn't gone away for them. When we look at a place like Nicaragua, it doesn't come up very often, but it should because kind of this persecution on Christians there is state controlled. Right? We don't have an outside actor, like a terrorist group. We have the government who is targeting religious institutions because they think that they're actually like a political threat to kind of like the ruling power there. So they do things like arrest, surveillance, they close churches. You know, the Ortega regime has stripped the legal status of 1300 churches and other affiliated religious organizations, and they closed more than 25 Catholic groups. Right? These are huge numbers. They've seized churches, the schools belonging to churches, their properties and land, and they've targeted clergy by either arresting them or getting them forced out into exile. So these laws are all in place to really kind of crush, like an independent civil society because they're worried. Right? The Christians can come together and have some sort of impact politically. So it's an interesting thing to pay attention to because it's not getting any better for the Christians there. Now, when we talk about China, lots of times we don't talk about the Christians because there are other problems, like the Uyghurs, for example. But China does have a very strong control on Christianity there. There's lots of surveillance and coercion and regulation. So house churches, they face closures. Leaders get detained if they're outside of this kind of approved system that China has implemented. And this is like a different model than we're seeing other places, because it's less visible. Right. We're not actually seeing this problem on the outside because it's like this structured control of Christianity. It's smart how they did it. But since 2025, they've detained more than 30 pastors and church leaders, saying, hey, you're running these unregistered congregations. That's illegal here in China. And one of the most famous ones is the founder of Beijing Zion Church. Right? This is a massive organization. It's run across 50 different cities in China. Right. Supporting Christianity. And monitoring groups are reporting that there's raids constantly on churches. They'll go into homes and confiscate religious materials and. And then there's ongoing restrictions on any sort of worship involving Christianity. Again, a persistent problem. If you live in China. Now, the last country I want to get into is Pakistan. So in Pakistan, Christians face this constant vulnerability, and it's to do with blasphemy or the laws around it, or even the accusations of blasphemy, because most of the time they're not even committing this crime, and it's someone saying they are. The Christian population in Pakistan is incredibly small. Even just all minorities combined in the country is only like 4% so this affects a small number of people. But if we just go back to when these blasphemy laws were put in place in the 1980s, there's been more than 1800 people charged with under this law. In 89 people have been extraditiously killed as a result of this law. Right. Like they did not go through a proper court system, be charged, you know, and put in jail. What happens is it gets out in the public that someone's charged with blasphemy and then mob violence comes in and people will literally kill these Christians with their hands. I mean, it's one of the craziest things you'll ever see or you'll see their home burnt with them in it. It's pretty traumatic to watch. And there's so many fears around this. I don't know if you saw the incident that occurred. It was back in 2023, this massive mob violence that happened in Jarwin Walla and it destroyed more than 20 churches and dozens of Christian homes. Christians in Pakistan are constantly concerned about being accused of blasphemy. Right. Because it might not just be impact them, it could impact their entire community. I mean, this is a very dangerous situation to be in. Now we talked about everything on the country level, but I want to kind of zoom in on one example, right. Kind of to make it a little more personal. So we have this case, it's Pastor Moshtabi Ahmadi and he was living in Iran and he became a convert to Christian. Of course, the government captured him as a result, tortured him. They held him for 170 days, you know, in this confinement. When he gets released, he fled to Turkey, claimed asylum. And now we're unfortunately in a situation where Turkey is talking about deporting him back to Iran. Of course he's not going to just go to Iran and go back to prison and be tortured. He's likely going to get a death sentence sentence. And his story is not widely known. But it's important for people to understand this broader reality, right? Escaping persecution does not mean reaching safety. Right. He got out of that dangerous environment and look, someone, a state is willing to send him back. This is a constant problem for people all over the world and it's just important like he's one case, but there's thousands of people in this situation fearing being sent back because they're Christian. You know, across all the cases we talked about today, of course there's patterns, right? Religious persecution correlates with weak governance, being in active conflict zones. You know, kind of this extremist ideology or terrorist presence and then a state controlled mechanism, right, these regulations or laws put in the books to impact Christians. So don't look at this as a single phenomenon, look at it as a spectrum. Now, when we talk about Palm Sunday in these regions, these situations really can escalate into bad things, like the more than dozen killed in Nigeria. And I want to walk through just some of the more severe situations that occur. So you're aware, obviously, we get full communities that are destroyed, churches and homes get burned. We get families that are displaced internally and some actually have to flee outside of their country, you know, to seek some sort of refuge and safety. We get religious leaders arrested, executed, exiled. We have, you know, pockets of Christianity that are forced to go into like, and hold these, like, underground services and have underground movements. Then we have children abducted and separated from their families, forced to convert to other religions, you know, sometimes Islam, for example. And then we have, in the most extreme cases, communities that get completely wiped out, like they no longer exist. And that's our fear in some places, especially in Syria. So this is not about elevating, you know, one religious group over another. It's about recognizing kind of this fundamental principle that individuals should be able to practice their faith all around the world without fear, without persecution. And in many regions, unfortunately, that is just not possible or it's not happening, even if the government said they'll make it possible. So this weekend, especially Palm Sunday, really reminded us, you know, the experience of faith isn't exactly felt the same, you know, everywhere you're located. You know, some interruptions are brief, right? They can be due to some sort of immediate danger, like we said, missiles coming in from Iran. Others are living under kind of a relentless targeting and it really is constantly life threatening. We need to recognize these distinctions, right, because they matter. And if you know the facts, then you know where we actually need to act and we can respond and help those who are most under threat. Thank you for joining us here today on the watch floor.