Addressing a congressional hearing last Thursday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complained that conservatives invoke religious freedom only “in the name of bigotry and discrimination.” Such arguments, now commonplace in progressive circles, often point to the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and its state-level equivalents as especially suspect in this regard. That the claim is scurrilous is demonstrated by the recent decision of a federal district court in Arizona in favor of a group of Unitarian Universalists who illegally entered a wildlife refuge in order to provide food and supplies to illegal immigrants.

For decades, Sudan has not only been a safe haven for terrorists and an ally of such unsavory regimes as Iran and Qatar, it has also suffered from poverty, a bloody civil war, and a despotic Islamist regime. Its recent decision to make peace with Israel follows on the heels of—and flows from—the end of this long period of misrule. Jonathan Schanzer comments: