Dechristianization

Sobering reading from the Jerusalem Post: http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/10/the-forgotten-christians-of-th.php

The significant paragraphs:

For instance, at the time of Lebanese independence from France in
1946 the majority of Lebanese were Christians. Today less than 30% of
Lebanese are Christians. In Turkey, the Christian population has
dwindled from 2 million at the end of World War I to less than 100,000
today. In Syria, at the time of independence Christians made up nearly
half of the population. Today 4% of Syrians are Christian. In Jordan
half a century ago 18% of the population was Christian. Today 2% of
Jordanians are Christian.

Christians are prohibited from practicing Christianity in Saudi
Arabia. In Pakistan, the Christian population is being systematically
destroyed by regime-supported Islamic groups. Church burnings, forced
conversions, rape, murder, kidnap and legal persecution of Pakistani
Christians has become a daily occurrence.

Sadly for the Christians of the Islamic world, their cause is not
being championed either by Western governments or by Western
Christians. Rather than condition French support for the Syrian
opposition on its leaders’ commitment to religious freedom for all in a
post-Assad Syria, the French Foreign Ministry reacted with anger to
Rai’s warning of what is liable to befall Syria’s Christians in the
event President Bashar Assad and his regime are overthrown. The Foreign
Ministry published a statement claiming it was “surprised and
disappointed,” by Rai’s statement.

The Obama administration was even less sympathetic. [...] Rai’s
visit to the US was supposed to begin with a visit to Washington and
meetings with senior administration officials including President
Barack Obama. Yet, following his statement in Paris, the administration
cancelled all of its scheduled meetings with him. That is, rather than
consider the dangers that Rai warned about and use US influence to
increase the power of Christians and Kurds and other minorities in any
post- Assad Syrian government, the Obama administration decided to
blackball Rai for pointing out the dangers.

Aside from Evangelical Protestants, most Western churches are
similarly uninterested in defending the rights of their co-religionists
in the Islamic world. [...]

As for the Vatican, in the five years since Pope Benedict XVI laid
down the gauntlet at his speech in Regensburg and challenged the
Muslim world to act with reason and tolerance it its dealing with other
religions, the Vatican has abandoned this principled stand. A true
discourse of equals has been replaced by supplication to Islam in the
name of ecumenical understanding. Last year Benedict hosted a Synod on
Christians in the Middle East that made no mention of the persecution
of Christians by Islamic and populist forces and regimes. Instead,
Israel was singled out for criticism.

The Vatican’s outreach has extended to Iran where it sent a
representative to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s faux counter terror conference.
As Giulio Meotti wrote this week in Ynet, whereas all the EU
ambassadors walked out of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denying speech at the
UN’s second Durban conference in Geneva in 2009, the Vatican’s
ambassador remained in his seat.