The Most Revd and Rt Hon Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, initiated a debate in the House of Lords on Friday ( 9 December) on the situation of Christians in the Middle East.

The Archbishop was joined by around 80 peers, who stayed to listen to the whole debate with around 30 members discussing the situation facing the Christian population in the Middle East. The opening and closing remarks from the Archbishop can be found below along with contributions made by the Rt Revd Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Revd Christopher Hill, Bishop of Guildford, and the Rt Revd John Hind, Bishop of Chichester.

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With the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq in its final days, President Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will meet at the White House Monday to discuss the next phase of the relationship between their countries.

They will have plenty to discuss.

The withdrawal of all American troops on Dec. 31 marks the end of a nearly nine-year war that has been deeply divisive in both the U.S. and Iraq. While Obama and al-Maliki have pledged to maintain strong ties, the contours of the partnership between Washington and Baghdad remain murky, especially with Iran eager to assert influence over neighboring Iraq. And serious questions remain about Iraq’s capacity to stabilize both its politics and security.

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Iran will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday.

Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran’s airspace by the U.S. drone was a “hostile act” and warned of a “bigger” response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do.

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When I raised American concerns that Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood and the more extremist Salafis might replicate Iran, he was dismissive: “The experience of Iran will not be repeated in Egypt.”

I think he’s right. Revolutions are often messy, and it took Americans seven years from their victory in the American Revolution at Yorktown to get a ratified Constitution. Indonesia, after its 1998 revolution, felt very much like Egypt does today. It endured upheavals from a fundamentalist Islamic current, yet it pulled through.

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Perched on Tel Kinrot, a hill above the Sea of Galilee, Winston Mah turned his face toward the warm sun and took in the tranquil view before him.

To his right, the Christian pilgrim from San Diego saw banana groves at the edge of the calm fresh-water lake; to his left, on the opposite hill, rose the majestic Mount of Beatitudes at Tabga, where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus delivered his Sermon on the Mount.

“This is a unique experience,” Mah said, gazing at a lone fisherman on the water’s edge. “This is the view Jesus must have seen, the path he might have walked, the water he walked on. It’s a privilege to walk in his footsteps.”

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The radar-evading drone that crash-landed over the weekend in Iran was on a mission for the CIA, according to a senior U.S. official, raising fears that the aircraft’s sophisticated technology could be exploited by Tehran or shared with other American rivals.

It was unclear whether the drone’s mission took it over Iran or whether it strayed there accidentally because of technical malfunctions, the official said.

Though the drone flight was a CIA operation, U.S. military personnel were involved in flying the aircraft, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy involved.

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As the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed, Iran is getting closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb – it might be able to do so in less than two years. A Persian nuclear bomb threatens Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states as much as it does Israel. Europe and the United States also have reason to be deeply concerned.

And then there is what many had hoped would become the Arab Spring. It may be that a majority of Muslims in North Africa reject the form of democracy favoured in the West. Young Muslims have shown enormous courage in demonstrating for freedoms in the face of repression in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and the like. Yet, when relatively free elections have been conducted in Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, the Islamist parties have prevailed.

This does not mean such nations will become Islamic theocracies like Iran any time soon. It is likely that, in the short term at least, the Islamist parties will share power with other organisations, including the army.

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Could civil war erupt again? How fragile is the ramshackle coalition government of Shia, Kurd and Sunni led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki? Iraqi leaders I spoke to say the capacity to keep the present power-sharing agreement going is far more significant for the stability of the country than any enhanced security threat from al-Qa’ida following the departure of the last American soldiers. “The leaders behave like adversaries even when they are in the same government,” says Dr Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of parliament. “It would be better to have a government and an opposition, but nobody in Iraq feels safe enough to be in the opposition.”

Despite this anxious mood, Baghdad is less dangerous than it was in 2009, and infinitely better than it was in 2007, when more than a thousand bodies were turning up in the city every month.

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The seven remaining Jews in Baghdad have been named by WikiLeaks, leaving them in danger of persecution, according to the city’s Anglican vicar.

Their lives are now in immediate danger, according to Canon Andrew White, and they’ve been advised to hide their religion.

Canon White said Baghdad’s Anglican Church is trying to protect them, as they fear extremists might try to kill them if they’re identified.

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For five years, I became a fervent Islamist, moving up the ladder of increasingly radical organizations. All strands of this movement descend from the teachings of Banna. He fought against the British in Palestine, trained a paramilitary organization, and members of the movement killed Egypt’s prime minister in 1948. In response, the Egyptian state had Banna assassinated a few months later.

Yet I learned, through bitter experience, that Islamism is far from unitary or coherent. In the end, I quit what’s called “the Islamic movement” because I found it too controlling of my life ”” but also because I no longer wanted to be in a perpetual state of confrontation with the West. It took me several years of travel and study in the Middle East before my mind was free of Islamist influences. I remain a follower of Islam, the religion, but not of Islamism, the political ideology.

Because I was once a part of this movement ”” whose primary goal has been the creation of Islamic governments ”” and then established the world’s first counter-radical think tank, Quilliam, in London to oppose their ideology, I have been following the Arab uprisings with more than a passing interest.

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Copts and other Christian com­munities in Egypt fear that the unexpectedly large turnout in the first of the three rounds of voting in parliamentary elections will be translated into a resounding success for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. Other parties representing more conserva­tive Islamists ”” Salafis and Jihadis ”” are also likely to fare better than had been thought.

“The signs are very worrying,” a schoolteacher in Alexandria, Gabriel Ghali, said. “We are all worrying about what the huge queues will mean in terms of the votes cast, and we suspect it will mean a victory for the Islamic groups ”” and that’s bad news for us.”

Tens of thousands of Christians have emigrated since the overthrow of the Hosni Mubarak regime, and the outbreak of attacks on mem-bers of the community and their property.

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Emerging from the front lines in Tahrir Square earlier this week, with red, streaming eyes and a gas mask dangling from his neck, Mohamed Ghoneim was in an angry mood. But the target of the 43-year-old secular activist’s ire wasn’t the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or even the combined police and army troops who were battling protesters with tear gas and buckshot a few meters away. His anger was reserved for the people who weren’t in the square: the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We’re not surprised that the military was unhappy with the revolution, but we’re very, very disappointed in the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mr. Ghoneim said, spreading his arms in an arc. “Look around you. How many beards and niqabs [Islamic full-face veils] do you see? Almost none. The Brotherhood can push a button and bring out four million people, but we are 80 million. These people around me are Egypt.”

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Despite the chanting and the plastic tents, Tahrir Square now is a different place than it was during what is known in Egypt as the “18 Days,” back in January and February when protestors overthrew the Mubarak regime.

In Cairo, protestors have called for another massive demonstration in advance of Monday’s parliamentary elections. There are fears of renewed violence come Election Day; one man was killed on Saturday during clashes with Egyptian security services.

This latest phase of Egypt’s revolution has been a lot more violent, protestors say. In just nine days, at least 40 people have been killed and 2,000 more wounded in clashes with security forces. And, as the atmosphere changes, paranoia and sexual violence are on the rise.

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Security forces fought Monday with several thousand protesters in Tahrir Square in the third straight day of violence over demands that the military set a date for turning power over to civilians.

Egypt’s military-backed Cabinet offered its resignation Monday in what the protesters took as a gesture toward addressing their complaints. “God is great!” they shouted upon hearing the news.

Protesters vowed to remain in the streets despite violence that has killed 26 people before parliamentary elections that will begin Nov. 28 and continue for months.

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The Obama administration on Monday will name Iran, including its central bank, as a territory of “primary money laundering concern,” say senior U.S. officials, in an effort to further pressure Tehran after recent disclosures about its alleged role in terrorism and nuclear weapons proliferation.

The U.S. Treasury Department won’t formally sanction Iran’s central bank, Bank Markazi, as many Republican and Democratic lawmakers are demanding.

But U.S. officials said this new action would serve as a warning to governments and businesses in Europe, Asia and Latin America to wind down their ties to Bank Markazi and their purchases of Iranian crude oil, as even tougher actions likely will be coming down the road.

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Thousands of Egyptian protesters have re-occupied Tahrir Square in the capital, Cairo, after a violent attempt by troops and police to evict them.

They returned less than an hour after the assault, chanting against Egypt’s ruling military council.

Demonstrators earlier fled as security forces fired tear gas and beat them with truncheons. At least four people have died since Saturday, reports say.

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As the 31 December deadline for the pullout of all the American troops from Iraq approaches, the BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse in Baghdad asks what kind of a country Washington leaves behind.

“I’ve been here for over six years,” said John, a mulletted, moustachioed civilian contractor, driving a pickup truck through the dusty lanes of Camp Kalsu.

“I’m helping to do whatever needs to be done. Take it easy, see ya!” and with that he cranked up the volume on his iPod, plugged into the pickup’s stereo, and drove off in a blast of country and western.

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Jordanian immigrants take Communion at an Arabic-language Mass in Albuquerque. Lebanese-Americans help raise nearly $2 million for major improvements to a West Virginia church. Iraqi refugees who practice an ancient religion that views John the Baptist as their teacher hold baptisms in a Massachusetts pond popular for rowing regattas.

As war, the economy and persecution by Muslim extremists push Arab Christians and religious minorities out of the Middle East, the refugees and immigrants are quietly settling in small pockets across the U.S. They are reviving old, dormant churches, bringing together families torn apart by war and praying collectively in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. Religious experts say their growing presence in the U.S. is all about survival as Christians and religious minorities continue to get pushed out of the Holy Land.

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As the last U.S. troops pack up to leave Iraq by the end of next month, Pentagon officials and senior military commanders are warning that Iran will rush to fill a power vacuum created by the American exit unless Washington limits its pullback from the region.

That broad assessment has taken on urgency in recent weeks against a backdrop of new intelligence that indicates the government in Tehran also is aggressively courting proxy forces in Yemen and, according to United Nations nuclear inspectors, is fast approaching the capability to build nuclear weapons.

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An investigation into commercial online filtering technology reveals the prevalence of devices from Blue Coat, an American firm, being used to censor the Web in Syria and Burma. Ron Deibert of Toronto’s Citizen Lab discusses the report’s importance.

If you live in Burma or Syria, good luck trying to access pro-democracy websites, overseas news networks, even dating websites. Thanks to devices made by Blue Coat Systems, portions of the Net are inaccessible to residents in these countries, and a recent report reveals how a number of these filtering devices have been found in the regions, despite the manufacturer claiming they never sell their products to embargoed countries.

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The world’s leading oil exporter Saudi Arabia faces rising tensions with regional rival Iran and turmoil in two neighbouring countries hit by the wave of Arab unrest this spring as it tackles changes at the top of its ruling family.

The death of Crown Prince Sultan in October led to conservative Interior Minister Prince Nayef’s promotion to King Abdullah’s heir only a week after the octogenarian monarch had his third back operation within a year.

The stability of Saudi Arabia is of global importance since the kingdom sits on more than a fifth of the world’s oil reserves, is a significant owner of dollar assets and acts as Middle East lynchpin of U.S. security policy.

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United Nations weapons inspectors have amassed a trove of new evidence that they say makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device,” and that the project may still be under way.

The long-awaited report, released by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday, represents the strongest judgment the agency has issued in its decade-long struggle to pierce the secrecy surrounding the Iranian program. The findings, drawn from evidence of far greater scope and depth than the agency has previously made public, have already rekindled a debate among the Western allies and Israel about whether increased diplomatic pressure, sanctions, sabotage or military action could stop Iran’s program.

Knowing that their findings would be compared with the flawed Iraq intelligence that preceded the 2003 invasion ”” and has complicated American moves on Iran ”” the inspectors devoted a section of the report to “credibility of information.” The information was from a range of independent sources, they said; some was backed up by interviews with foreigners who had helped Iran.

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Military action against Iran would be a “very serious mistake fraught with unpredictable consequences”, Russia’s foreign minister has warned.

Sergei Lavrov said diplomacy, not missile strikes, was the only way to solve the Iranian nuclear problem.

His comments come after Israeli President Shimon Peres said an attack on Iran was becoming more likely.

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Iran may be the most challenging test of the Obama administration’s focus on new, cheap technologies that could avoid expensive boots on the ground; drones are the most obvious, cyberweapons the least discussed. It does not quite add up to a new Obama Doctrine, but the methods are defining a new era of nearly constant confrontation and containment. Drones are part of a tactic to keep America’s adversaries off balance and preoccupied with defending themselves. And in the past two and a half years, they have been used more aggressively than ever. There are now five or six secret American drone bases around the world. Some recently discovered new computer worms suggest that a new, improved Stuxnet 2.0 may be in the works for Iran.

“There were a lot of mistakes made the first time,” said an American official, avoiding any acknowledgment that the United States played a role in the cyber attack on Iran. “This was a first-generation product. Think of Edison’s initial light bulbs, or the Apple II.”

Not surprisingly, the Iranians are refusing to sit back and take it ”” which is one reason many believe the long shadow war with Iran is about to ramp up dramatically. At the White House and the C.I.A., officials say the recently disclosed Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States ”” by blowing up a tony Georgetown restaurant frequented by senators, lobbyists and journalists ”” was just the tip of the iceberg.

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As the United States prepares to withdraw its troops from Iraq by year’s end, senior American and Iraqi officials are expressing growing concern that Al Qaeda’s offshoot here, which just a few years ago waged a debilitating insurgency that plunged the country into a civil war, is poised for a deadly resurgence.

Qaeda allies in North Africa, Somalia and Yemen are seeking to assert more influence after the death of Osama bin Laden and the diminished role of Al Qaeda’s remaining top leadership in Pakistan. For its part, Al Qaeda in Iraq is striving to rebound from major defeats inflicted by Iraqi tribal groups and American troops in 2007, as well as the deaths of its two leaders in 2010.

Although the organization is certainly weaker than it was at its peak five years ago and is unlikely to regain its prior strength, American and Iraqi analysts said the Qaeda franchise is shifting its tactics and strategies ”” like attacking Iraqi security forces in small squads ”” to exploit gaps left by the departing American troops and to try to reignite sectarian violence in the country.

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…would you have guessed that Lebanon’s fertility rate is now the same as Finland’s?

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On October 5-6 in Cairo, Egypt, bishops from the Diocese of Egypt and dioceses in the north of Sudan held a meeting of reflection and planning with several mission partners, including the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Relief and Development Fund. This important meeting was held for the benefit of discussing the challenges and needs facing the suffering northern dioceses of the Province of the Episcopal (Anglican) Church of Sudan. Upon completion of this meeting, the partners in mission with Sudan released an official communique stating the challenges facing this region, their specific needs, and the top priorities of the partners in mission in order to implement lasting peace in the Sudan.

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As democratic movements bring down autocratic regimes across the Middle East, Islamic parties are moving into the newly opened political space. Many Americans understandably find this development alarming because the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001 claimed to follow Islamic tenets.

People inside and outside the Middle East worry that women’s rights, minority rights, freedom of expression, and due process might be threatened if Islamic parties take power. (These worries multiply when people hear the phrase “Sharia Law.”) However, it would be wrong to confuse the 9/11 terrorists with religious parties in the region. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, for example, is Islamic and is also committed to democracy and the fight against terrorism as our NATO ally….

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The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.

Assumptions that the Great Republic must inevitably spiral into economic and strategic decline – so like the chatter of the late 1980s, when Japan was in vogue – will seem wildly off the mark by then.
Telegraph readers already know about the “shale gas revolution” that has turned America into the world’s number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia….

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On the Sabbath morning of Nov. 5, less than three weeks after the release of Sgt. First Class Gilad Shalit in a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, Jews in synagogues throughout the world will read a Torah portion concerning Abraham’s early journeys. The text recounts how invaders conquered the city of Sodom, taking Abraham’s nephew Lot as a captive, and the way Abraham raised an army to rescue him.

The timing of this Torah reading is an absolute coincidence, an unplanned synchronicity between the religious calendar and breaking news. Yet the passage also offers an essential explanation, one almost entirely ignored in coverage of the Shalit deal, for Israel’s anguished decision to pay a ransom in the form of more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including the perpetrators of terrorist attacks on civilians.

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