Madam, - Raymond Deane (January 15th) takes issue with Leo Varadkar (January 8th) about the causes of the decline in the Christian population in the Middle East. "To attribute this phenomenon to the wiles of Islam is perverse and propagandistic in the extreme," he writes. However, the clear facts show that Christianity is under attack, to some degree, in almost every country in the Middle East as I see from reports from the region that cross my desk every week.
In Egypt, a significant number of young teenage Christian girls are being kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men; converts to Christianity are imprisoned and there are continuing restrictions on church building and church repair.
In Turkey, small indigenous Christian churches face great difficulties in registering; converts from Islam are currently on trial for "insulting Turkishness"; and the Bible Society has faced threats simply for having a stall at a book fair.
In the Palestinian territories, the YMCA building in Qalqiliya was set on fire in September by members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad (six months after the town's mufti and other Muslim leaders demanded its closure); the Bible Society in Gaza was forced to close for a period last year after bomb threats and a Bible Society building in Bir Zeit was firebombed last February. Later the walls were daubed with the message: "Leave our land and get out of here".
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Christian emigration is the result of a long process of exclusion and persecution. - Yours, etc,
DAVID TURNER, National Co-ordinator, Christian Concern for Freedom of Conscience, Glenageary, Co Dublin.