Which Muslim-majority governments and religious institutions implemented policies to protect Christian communities after 2014, and with what results?

1. Legal and administrative reforms: Egypt and Iraq tried reforms on paper

Egypt passed a law in 2016 easing rules on the construction and restoration of churches, a formal step meant to address long-standing restrictions on Copts and increase religious freedom for Christians, and Iraq established an Endowment Office for Christian, Yazidi and Mandaean communities and began limited Syriac instruction in 2014—moves that signaled state recognition of minority needs but did not erase deeper structural problems ^[1].

2. Education and cultural measures: limited but symbolically important

Iraq’s 2014 introduction of Syriac into public schools in governorates with large Christian populations and the creation of a minority endowment were intended to bolster cultural survival and language transmission, measures that scholars cite as meaningful but limited in scope and reach, especially given continuing emigration and security shortfalls ^{[1] [4]}.

3. Religious-institution initiatives: Marrakesh Declaration and scholar-led efforts

A broad body of Muslim religious leaders and scholars issued the Marrakesh Declaration calling on majority-Muslim countries to protect religious minorities, and organizations such as ISNA and OIC-linked convenings have sought protocols to secure minority citizenship rights—efforts that foreground theological arguments for pluralism but rely on voluntary uptake by states and communities ^{[2] [5] [3]}.

4. Security interventions and enforcement gaps: law on the books vs. protection in practice

Independent reporting and scholarly assessments note a gap between reforms and on-the-ground protection: in Egypt and elsewhere post-2013 incidents showed police sometimes failing to protect churches from mob attacks, and in Iraq the Islamic State’s 2014 assault on the Nineveh Plains produced mass displacement that legal reforms alone could not reverse, demonstrating that legislation without sustained security and accountability measures yields limited results ^{[6] [7] [4]}.

5. Outcomes: partial gains, continued attrition, and uneven returns

Where reforms were implemented they produced modest benefits—legal pathways for church repair in Egypt and small-scale cultural revival in parts of Iraq—but these gains coexist with demographic decline (Christians in Iraq fell sharply after 2003 and many only began to return slowly after ISIS’s defeat in 2017), persistent violent attacks in multiple countries, and reports that constitutions and enforcement still fall short of guaranteeing security for minorities ^{[1] [4] [7]}.

6. Competing narratives, agendas, and the role of institutions

State reforms can be driven by international pressure, domestic politics, or the desire to marginalize Islamist movements, and religious institutions’ endorsements—such as the visible support Egyptian religious leaders gave to the 2013 political shift—can mix protection rhetoric with political legitimation; academic critiques of initiatives like the Marrakesh Declaration stress that theological declarations must be translated into binding law and institutional reform to matter ^{[8] [3] [2]}.

7. Bottom line: commitments exist but must be matched with security, justice, and political will

Post-2014 policies by some Muslim-majority governments and Islamic bodies provide signposts toward protecting Christians—legal reforms in Egypt, endowment and education steps in Iraq, and transnational scholarly declarations—but reporting and scholarship converge on the conclusion that outcomes remain fragile because of enforcement gaps, ongoing violence by nonstate actors, and larger demographic trends that legal recognition alone cannot reverse ^{[1] [6] [3] [4]}.