Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on July 22 called the religious leaders of Iran “hypocritical holy men” who amassed vast sums of wealth while allowing their people to suffer. Pompeo also castigated Iran’s political, judicial and military leaders.

Around the world, religious minorities are persecuted and stripped of human rights. This is an issue many countries must work together to solve.

Last month, Mohammad Salas, a member of the Iranian Gonabadi Sufi dervish community persecuted by the Iranian regime for its beliefs, was convicted and sentenced to death on questionable grounds following violent clashes between security forces and Gonabadi dervishes. Mr Salas and his supporters maintained his innocence, reportedly stating he had been tortured into a forced confession. Sadly, on June 18 the regime hanged Mr Salas in the notorious Rajai Shahr Prison.

Salas’s death was part of a larger crack-down on Gonabadi Sufi Muslims that began in February. Hundreds of Sufi Muslims in Iran remain imprisoned on account of their beliefs, with reports of several dying at the hands of Iran’s brutal security forces. The religious intolerance of the regime in Iran also applies to Christians, Jews, Sunnis, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and other minority religious groups simply trying to practice their faiths.

Around the world, adherents from innumerable faith backgrounds suffer similar violations of their most fundamental human rights. Earlier this year, the State Department hosted six United States-based Uighur journalists with Radio Free Asia’s Uighur Service. Their reporting indicates that Chinese authorities are likely detaining, at least, hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in internment camps in Xinjiang. One journalist, Gulchehra Hoja, shared that 23 of her family members have been detained in the region. She, like others, have little to no information about her family’s well-being.

In Burma, since August 2017, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee to Bangladesh because of an ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by the Burmese security forces. Reports have indicated children, elderly, and infirm persons were burned alive in houses.

To advance the cause of religious freedom, we need all these voices to work together.

We need religious leaders of every faith to articulate to their adherents that violence is not a righteous way to propagate belief.