How One Organization Protects Religious Minorities

One Free World International is a global human rights organization that focuses on the rights of religious minorities and promotes tolerance, understanding and respect for diverse religious beliefs.

religious-minoritiesRev. Majed El Shafie is a human rights advocate and is the President and Founder of One Free World International.

Belonging to a very prominent legal and political family in Egypt, Rev. El Shafie had tried to work within the Egyptian system to reform the country’s human rights regime. His human rights journey started in his native Egypt that he was later forced to flee.

Rev. El Shafie was severely tortured and sentenced to death for his conversion to Christianity and bringing awareness to human rights violations related to religious persecution. Rev. El Shafie fights for those persecuted around the world. Pressuring governments, and challenging both world and spiritual leaders, he has not been afraid to put everything on the line to help those in need, including his life.

Between the challenges he faced in these efforts, his firsthand experience as a survivor of religious persecution, the work he has engaged in since advocating for religious freedom, confronting governments that violate this fundamental right, and conducting fact-finding missions and humanitarian/rescue operations, he has obtained significant knowledge and insight into the dynamics of persecution of religious minorities by religious extremists and totalitarian governments alike.

One Free World International is one of the leading organizations advocating for religious minorities globally and has 28 branches around the world. Rev. El Shafie has organized and led delegations of parliamentarians and leaders to address minority rights and humanitarian issues with government leaders, including cabinet ministers and other high-level officials, opposition leaders, and religious leaders in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bangladesh, India and Cuba.

Rev. El Shafie has developed excellent relationships with members of the Canadian House of Commons, Senate, and Cabinet, and has built bridges with the US Congress in order to educate decision-makers about violations of religious freedom around the world. He has testified before the United States Congress, the Canadian Government and the United Nations in New York and Geneva.

READ  Egypt Protests and Pakistan Religious Inequality

Rev. El Shafie  has advocated on behalf of Christians, Falun Gong, Jews, Bahá’í’s, Ahmadiyya Muslims, and China’s Uyghur Muslims, among others.

Leading North American and international news media have featured his work which has also been the subject of an international award-winning feature-length documentary the Freedom Fighter, and subsequently the book the Freedom Fighter which was published depicting Rev. El Shafie’s fight for “one free world.”

The Freedom Fighter shows the world what is happening to the Christians and other minorities in places where extremism, hate and fear seem to have all the power, with no one to challenge them. It follows the efforts of Rev. Majed over a four year period, as he travels to Pakistan and Afghanistan to investigate claims of abuse, persecution and slavery. You will also witness the horrific story of what happened to a little girl and her family in Pakistan and Rev. Majed’s fight to save their lives. As Rev. El Shafie always says …. “They can kill the dreamer, but they cannot kill the dream.”

For more information about One Free World International and Rev. El Shafie please visit:

Rev. Majed El Shafie is a human rights advocate and founder of One Free World International (OFWI).

  • Ali H. Alyami

    Islam, Muslims and Irreversible Trends

    CDHR’s Commentary: It’s not accidental that most Arabs and other Muslims are
    described as the utmost intolerant of other religions and their adherents. Growing up
    in Saudi Arabia, I, like all Saudi youth, was fed hatred for Christians, Jews, religious minorities and even for the majority Sunni Muslims who accepted and embraced the concept of human evolution instead of continuing to adhere to the literal interpretation of Islam as it was practiced in the seventh century which the Saudi authorities continue to emphasize, enforce and export.

    When tolerant, enlightened human rights activists and individuals like Majed El
    Shafie, an Egyptian promoter of religious tolerance and many others like Saudi Wahhabi former extremist cleric, Mansour Al-Nogaidan, who promotes reformation of Islam, speak up, they are accused of being apostate. They are either forced to flee their homeland or go to prison and in some cases receive the death penalty for tweeting an imaginary dream. Progressive Arabs who promote religious tolerance, social justice, non-sectarian political systems and freedoms of choice end up in Western Europe and/or in North America (the lands of “infidels”) where they can be free to express themselves and rally support for human rights activists and for their voiceless compatriots in the lands from which they hailed.

    Not only do political and other human rights activists flee their homelands to seek individual liberty and freedom of expression, but millions of Arabs and other Muslims
    migrate to the West to seek a better life for themselves and for their children. In the West, they enjoy freedoms of choice, unrestricted movements, respect and equality under the rule of law, rights denied them under the autocratic and theocratic tyrannical regimes and their punishing religious law (Shariah) in their homelands. Paradoxically and unfathomably, many of the latter category of immigrants demand
    implementation of the Shariah law that forced them to abandon their countries of origins in the first place. One can only assume that many of them become nostalgic to living under authoritarian systems where the state determines all aspects of people’s lives.

    Additionally, many Muslims in the West, Arabs and non-Arabs, discover that living in a democratic society requires more individual responsibility and self-reliance than the regulated lifestyles into which they were born and raised. Many Muslim immigrants seem to prefer going back to their undemocratic religious and cultural traditions which regulate every aspect of their lives including personal relationships, interactions and perceptions, especially male and female relationships where men have full control over women. To justify their reversion, they convince themselves that their religion and cultures are superior to those of the societies which provide them with political, religious, economic and social freedoms and opportunities they cannot dream of, let alone achieve, in the lands they left behind.

    Encouragingly, more Arabs and other Muslims, young and old, men and women, are not only questioning the ramifications of their authoritarian faith on their lives, but some see it as the root cause of their lack of political, social, economic and scientific progress. They are also realizing that their misfortunes are homegrown and their successes, security and well-being depend on being part of the international
    community as demanded by modernity, globalization and shared interests and values. Some Arabs and other Muslims believe that the problem is their faith
    itself and others argue that their faith has been used as a tool of oppression, corruption, discrimination and intolerance. The debate is gaining momentum mostly due to the utilization of social media by millions of Arabs and other Muslims. This is why the social media and its users are condemned by and is causing many autocratic and theocratic regimes to denounce the modern technologies and their users. Given the current global trends and predictions, the battle between modernity and those fighting it, it’s unlikely that the latter will ever have a chance to win.