The Palm Sunday attacks by the so-called Islamic State or Daesh on Coptic churches in Egypt is the latest manifestation of the unrelenting war against Christianity in the Middle East.
The Islamist terrorists attacked a Coptic church in the town of Tanta and St Mark’s Cathedral in the city of Alexandria. The Coptic Church’s leader, Pope Tawadros II, had attended a Palm Sunday mass in the cathedral.
The forthcoming visit of Pope Francis to Egypt serves as a reminder that Catholics are also targets of jihadists in the Middle East and North Africa along with other Christian denominations.
What we are witnessing is the Islamisation of the region. It is estimated that about a million Jews were driven from Arab and other Muslim nations between 1920 and 1970. Today few Jews live in the region outside Israel. However, about 20 per cent of the Israeli population is Muslim. There is freedom of religion in Israel for Sunni and Shia Muslims alike of a kind not replicated in many majority Muslim nations with respect to their own Muslim minorities.
It’s much the same with Christians. In recent decades, the number of Muslims living in what were once described as Christian Western nations has increased substantially. Muslims in democratic Western societies enjoy untrammelled freedom of religion.
Read the full article by Gerard Henderson at The Weekend Australian.