Just from the rapidly declining numbers of Christians in Muslim majority states it should be obvious that something is very wrong. According to a US Department of State report on religious freedom, there are now just 85 000 Christians in Turkey, down from 2 million. In Lebanon, where they once constituted a majority, they now make up no more than one-third of the population. Once as much as half the population in Syria, they now constitute perhaps 4%. In Jordan, they make up 2%, when they were once close to one in five.

Especially ironical is how the US-led invasion of Iraq, rather than benefiting the Christian population, has had exactly the opposite effect. Once kept in check by the Saddam regime, hard-core Islamists have now been left free to persecute their Christian neighbours and have done so relentlessly. The massacre of 37 worshipers at Baghdad's Sayyidat al-Najat Syrian Catholic Christian Church in October last year was just one of multiple incidents of anti-Christian violence in Iraq. That the law officially strongly opposes such acts makes little difference. In practice few are arrested, let alone punished, for attacks on religious minorities, even those involving murder. The impact of this undeclared reign of terror has been dramatic, with the Christian population — 1.4 million strong at the time of the 2003 Coalition invasion — dropping 50% in less than a decade.

For Egypt's embattled Coptic Christian minority, the Arab Spring in their country has been a disaster. One of the worst cases of violence against them took place only last month, where the military killed dozens of Christians (inter alia, video evidence shows armoured-vehicles running over civilians) protesting the destruction of their churches. The response of Western governments has been one of studied apathy. Indeed, it has been alleged that US President Barack Obama's top Muslim adviser blocks Middle Eastern Christians' access to the White House.

Earlier this year, the mainly Christian Southern Sudan was allowed to break away to form its own independent state. Prior to this, however, and for many years, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese Christians had been massacred, ethnically cleansed in massive numbers or (literally) enslaved.

Anti-Christian persecution is happening in the Palestinian territories as well. In Gaza, assaults, firebombings, seizures of homes and businesses and death threats against Christians happen continually and usually with impunity. Today, barely 3 000 Christians remain there. The West Bank's Christian population likewise has dropped sharply, even in Bethlehem, Christianity's birthplace.

What is now happening to Arab Christians has already happened to Jews in those countries. In the 20 years following the establishment of Israel, the North African and Middle Eastern Jewish communities left en masse after being subjected to systematic, usually state-orchestrated persecution. Well over 95% of those communities and their descendants now live elsewhere. It was one of the 20th century's forgotten enforced exoduses, and now it is happening all the time to Christians, likewise without eliciting much comment from the world at large.