Minister for Faith and Communities Baroness Warsi has written to the Vatican’s newspaper L\u2019Osservatore Romano, expressing her dismay at the global scale of Christian persecution. Throughout the Middle East – and especially in Syria, Egypt and Iraq – Christians are suffering a level and scale of discrimination, abuse, torture and murder not seen since the Roman emperors were burning believers alive to illuminate their garden parties; dressing them in animal skins to be torn apart by dogs; or crucifying them, to die in lingering agony. The lucky ones had a quick death by beheading.<\/p>\n
Baroness Warsi is of the view that majority Muslim nations have a duty to defend Christian minorities. Nice words, but how does one inculcate a sense of such duty in those countries and communities where millions are steeped from birth in a virulent ideology which directly opposes it? In the West, many Muslims view Christians as “People of the Book”; fellow worshippers of the One True God, on a journey toward faith illuminated by the Torah and the Gospels. Yet throughout the rest of the world, and certainly in majority Muslim countries, Christians are kuffar or dhimmi – disbelievers in the Prophet Mohammad, socially subordinate to Muslims, from whom compulsory taxation (jizha) is to be extracted for ‘protection’. In some of these cultures, Christians are a little lower than pigs. Throughout the Middle East, lambs are slaughtered in a more humane fashion than Christians are beheaded.<\/p>\n