In Egypt, before the protests, Christians lived under steady oppression: Permits to build a church took decades to win approval, and authorities would sometimes arrest converts. But in December the persecution escalated when an Islamic suicide bomber attacked a church in Alexandria, killing 2

And now with the political uncertainty, Christians’ fears are growing. “If Mubarak is ousted, we are done. The Christian population will be annihilated,” said an Egyptian Christian living in Amman, Jordan, who asked not to be identified for security reasons. “Look what they did to us under Mubarak, imagine what they will do without him holding them back.”

Foreign policy experts worry that if no other group fills the institutional vacuum that President Mubarak will leave, the Islamists will. And if the Muslim Brotherhood does move to establish an Islamic state, the Obama administration will be ill-prepared to fend off assaults on religious liberty. “Deer in the headlights,” is how Tom Farr, the director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom under President Bush, described the U.S. government’s disposition when religious actors take power.

The U.S. government is ill-prepared partly because the post of ambassador for international religious freedom has been vacant for two years—and that post is the only designated advocate in the U.S. government for the issue. The post has been vacant for the entire Obama administration after the president’s nominee, New York pastor Suzan Johnson Cook, failed to make it out of committee in the last Congress.

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