ASU leaders, senator gather to discuss religious freedom report

“There is no right more fundamental to free society than the free practice of religion,” said Evelyn Farkas, reciting a quote from the late Senator John McCain. “No society that denies religious freedom can ever rightly claim to be good in some other way.”

Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute, was speaking at an event recognizing the institute’s recent publication of "The State of Religious Freedom Worldwide" report. Through the perspective of nine different authors, the report explores different perspectives on religious persecution and discrimination within the Axis of Upheaval (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea).

“Freedom of conscience, freedom of affiliation, freedom to decide, to believe, to worship, to practice as you want is often one of the most powerful values opportunities that attracts people to our nation,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, who served in the Senate with McCain.

Reflecting on his personal relationship with the McCain, Coons shared: “John was someone who I sat in awe of, and he was kind enough to let me travel with him on a dozen occasions, and I got to see and hear and experience how he engaged with folks around the world and how he lived those values.”

Following Coons’ remarks, five of the report’s authors participated in a panel discussion, offering deeper insights into their contributions to the report.

One author, Jewher Ilham, spoke about her family’s firsthand experience facing persecution in China. Ilham’s father, a Uyghur scholar, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a Chinese detention facility. Inham has not heard from her father since 2017.

“When I wake up in the morning, I try my best to stay hopeful, although it's getting harder and harder and harder,” said Inham. “Not only is my family being persecuted, but you're seeing hundreds of thousands of Uyghur families, daughters and sons being separated from their loved ones."

The panel examined the current state of religious freedom in the world — from persecution of Christians in North Korea, to how countries like Russia, China and Iran are using religion to advance their agendas, to ways that the United States can be combating religious persecution globally on a bigger scale.

“The United States is the indispensable actor when it comes to advancing religious freedom and human rights, and when we're not engaged in a robust way, people suffer,” said Knox Thames, co-author and co-editor of the report.

“Our support for religious freedom, America's comfort with religion more broadly, is a distinctive part of the American value proposition. In order for us to be able to navigate and leverage those capacities, we need to have that ability for our diplomats, our foreign affairs specialists, to understand and engage religion,” said Peter Mandaville, professor of international affairs and director of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University. “This isn't just about calling out human rights violations and violations of religious freedom, it's about doing so in an emerging world order in which the geopolitical resonance of religion is evolving very quickly and in fundamentally different ways.”

The report was released in October 2025, and the panelists argued conditions may have even “gotten worse” across the four countries since its release — underscoring the urgency in continuing to advance religious freedom worldwide.

“Often, we show what we value by where we go,” said Coons. “I am showing that I value the work of the McCain Institute, the memory and legacy of John McCain, and what you're doing in releasing this report and continuing to elevate a sustained bipartisan engagement around religious liberty by having joined you today, by thanking you, and by continuing to invest in timely qualified action by my staff in sustaining this work.”

Read more about Arizona State University’s McCain Institute here: https://www.mccaininstitute.org/