The answer to the question - 'Who are the most persecuted people in the world?' - is Christians, according to professor of public ethics at Chester University, Paul Vallely, who quotes evidence from the secular International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), in support of his assertion.
He believes it is counter-intuitive for most people in the West to believe Christians are the most persecuted religious group because of Christianity's cultural dominance over centuries in western society. He stresses however that the evidence is overwhelming and points out that the ISHR, which has members in 38 countries worldwide, reports that 80% of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians.
He produces further evidence from the Centre for the Study of Global Christianity in the United States, which estimates that 11 Christians die every hour, targeted because of their faith, and quotes the Pew Research Center which says that in 2012, hostility to religion reached a new high when Christians faced various forms of discrimination in almost three-quarters of the world's nations.
"The plain fact is that Christians are languishing in jail for blasphemy in Pakistan, and churches are burned and worshippers regularly slaughtered in Nigeria and Egypt, which has recently seen its worst anti-Christian violence in seven centuries," says Paul Vallely. He points to increasing persecution in China; in North Korea where a quarter of the country's Christians live in forced labour camps after "refusing to join the national cult of the state's founder, Kim Il-Sung"; in Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Maldives, which feature in the 10 worst places to be a Christian.
The professor argues that only a few voices in the West have raised the issue and he singles out the stark warning from the former chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who told the House of Lords recently that the suffering of Middle East Christians was "one of the crimes against humanity of our time".
Paul Vallely says that in the UK "it is socially respectable among the secular elite to regard Christianity as weird and permissible to bully its followers a little". He adds that such an attitude produces "the surreal political reality in which President Obama visits Saudi Arabia and 'does not get the time' to raise the suppression of Christianity in the oil-rich nation". He also highlights the "broadside from illiberal secularists" against David Cameron for the assertion that Britain's culture was formed by Christian Values - a view that the professor says is "historically unquestionable".
Vallely urges the West to respond to the chief rabbi's warning and to heed the plea of men such as the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, who asked: "Does anybody hear our cry? How many atrocities must we endure before somebody, somewhere, comes to our aid?"
Read Paul Vallely's full piece here >
