Morocco has long been considered a bastion of relative religious tolerance in the Muslim world, but since March the government has summarily expelled dozens of Americans for Christian proselytizing.
Of the more than 100 Christians (some of them non-Americans) who have been deported—humanitarian workers, businessmen and teachers—many had lived in Morocco for more than a decade. Most were denied any semblance of due process, and some were given only a few hours to pack their bags. The government has provided little or no evidence of proselytizing, which is illegal in Morocco.
Eddie and Lynn Padilla had been foster parents in the Village of Hope, an orphanage located in the Atlas Mountains east of the capital of Rabat, where they were raising two Moroccan orphan boys under the age of two. The government has long known they are Christians and had granted them a 10-year visa.
That changed on March 9. After three days of police inspection and interrogation, the Padillas were given a few hours to gather their belongings. "It happened so fast that you didn't even really have time to feel the shock of it until later," Mrs. Padilla told us in an interview. "The worst moment of it all was handing over the boys. . . . These children were abandoned by their birth mothers. We were their parents."
Outside of the Christian press, the deportations have largely gone unnoticed. One man who has paid attention is Virginia Representative Frank Wolf, a Republican who co-chairs Congress's Human Rights Commission. In hearings last month, Mr. Wolf scored Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Ambassador to Morocco Sam Kaplan for failing to speak up for the expelled Americans.
Mr. Wolf wants Congress to suspend its $697.5 million five-year Millennium Challenge contract with Morocco. The program, which is intended to fight poverty, gives grants to countries based on factors like "ruling justly." U.S. taxpayers won't tolerate financing governments that mistreat Americans solely because of their religion.
Copyright ©2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
