bishops worried by Islam

PARIS - A drive to rekindle Roman Catholicism's missionary zeal is struggling to counter the challenge of Islam, a religion with an arguably more direct message and a greater institutional hold on its faithful.

Bishops who have been meeting for three weeks to plot a way forward for a Church whose membership is dwindling in Europe are concerned by Islam's growth and worried about Christian minorities in Muslim countries, according to participants' comments released by the Vatican.

Islam was barely mentioned in preparatory documents for the Synod on New Evangelization, a meeting in Rome of 262 prelates from around the world been held behind closed doors.

But one participant said it had become the "buzzword" of the synod that ends this weekend.

"It's no surprise that Islam has taken on such importance during this synod," French-born Bishop Paul Desfarges, who heads the diocese of Constantine in Algeria, told journalists in Rome this week. "It's an issue that concerns Europe."

Christianity, with about 2 billion followers, is the world's largest religion and Catholicism - its biggest denomination by far - makes up just over half that total.

But some estimates suggest that the 1.3 billion Muslims, four-fifths of them outside the Arab world, are growing in number much faster than Christians, whose numbers are shrinking in their European heartland.

"We need a much more developed analysis and discussion of the consequences of the Islamic presence in the Western world," Sydney Cardinal George Pell said.

Political boost for Islam

Some of the "Arab Spring" uprisings that have spread across North Africa and the Middle East have propelled Islam onto the political stage.

Kyrillos William, the Catholic Coptic bishop of Assiut, painted a stark picture of the situation facing Egypt's large Christian minority - about 10 percent of the population - since the upheavals of the Arab Spring.
"Every day since the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power, we see new steps towards the Islamization of the state," he said. "Christians continue to be considered second-class citizens and many of their rights are not recognized."

In a remark that Church leaders interpreted as criticism, a senior Egyptian official has said the Church's many schools and hospitals, which are used mostly by Muslims, gave it a presence in society much bigger than its actual size.

"Some extremists demand that we leave the country," the bishop said. "We've told them: 'No, this is our country and we're staying'."

In West Africa, where Christianity and Islam are vying for new followers among the many people quitting traditional religions, bishops felt Catholicism had a double disadvantage.

"The rapid expansion of Islam and especially the spreading of fundamentalism in West Africa enormously worries the Church," said Bishop Nicodeme Anani Barrigah-Benissan from Togo.

"It only takes one day to become Muslim but it is impossible to renounce this religion later," he said. By contrast, he added, it takes at least three years of study for an adult to become a Catholic, and the baptized can leave at will.

Patriarch Gregory III Laham, the Damascus-based head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, argued that Islam's main teaching - that there is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet - was easier for people to grasp.

"Our beautiful Christian faith is too complicated," he said.

Conversion illegal

Conversion from Islam to another religion is illegal in many Muslim countries, meaning that Christians dedicated to spreading their faith must do so very cautiously, several prelates noted.

Bishop Desfarges reported that some Algerian Muslims had converted to Catholicism. "These new disciples are sometimes rejected by their own family or must be very discreet," he said.

Bechara Boutros Rai, the Beirut-based head of the Maronite Church in communion with the Vatican, said there were also "some secret conversions by Muslims to Christianity" in Lebanon.

"Evangelization is practiced in the Arab countries in an indirect way," he said, through a wide network of Christian schools, hospitals and broadcast media that spread the Church's message without explicitly preaching it.

But several bishops, especially from countries where tensions between Christians and Muslims seem to be worst, saw the meeting of the two faiths as an opportunity for dialogue rather than a reason to bemoan their fate.

"Despite the impression often given by the world media, I want to stress that Christians in Nigeria do not see themselves as being under any massive persecution by Muslims," Abuja Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan told the synod.

"We need to know our Muslim neighbors and keep an open mind to those who are friendly, and they are in the majority," he said. "We have to work together to make sure that the fanatics do not dictate the agenda of our mutual relations."

The Islam debate at the conference got off to a rocky start when Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Vatican Council for Justice and Peace, screened a video suggesting that Europe was quickly being overrun by Muslims.

Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois from France, home to Europe's largest Muslim minority, panned the film as propaganda and said the New Evangelization "should not become a Crusade."

link

“Die slowly, you Christian dog”

‘This is what they are like. One of the killers, the commander of the “Bara” brigade, was found with a syringe full of diesel. He injected it into a man, a Christian, saying, “Die slowly, you  

Christian dog

Come the peace there will be no allies to be had in Syria.

Halal meat off school menus in Lancashire

THOUSANDS of Muslim children have been left without meat in their school meals after the county council suddenly axed its contract with a halal products supplier.

Education chiefs admitted it could take months before a replacement for KQF Foods is found – prompting the Council of Mosques to warn that youngsters’ diets could suffer.

A total of 68 Lancashire County Council schools are affected, including 45 in Burnley, Pendle, Hyndburn and Rossendale.

Five schools in Blackburn and Darwen, which still receive produce through the county’s central catering unit, have also lost their halal meat supplies.

Lancashire Council of Mosques chairman Salim Mulla said: “With the amount of Muslim children in schools under the local authority’s care we are concerned about where they will source their meat in the future.
“We want to see this difficulty resolved quickly. We are worried about our children being left without meat in their diet for any long period.”

Halal is the description of food and drink Muslims are allowed to consume under Islamic dietary laws, as defined in the Koran.

Classifying of halal food, including meat which must be slaughtered in a certain way, can only be carried out by a Muslim expert in the laws.

Confusion surrounds why KQF lost its contract, which started in May 2009 and was renewed in April.
The move follows an unexpected county council food standards inspection into the composition, labelling and quality of the meat on October 9.

The company, based in George West Street, Blackburn, said it had not been given full details of the justification for the decision but believes it relates to paperwork.

A spokesman added the firm was seriously concerned about damage to its reputation.

The county council has refused to disclose the reason but stressed it did not relate to the meat’s Halal accreditation or health and hygiene.

The most recent Blackburn with Darwen council food hygiene inspection gave KQF a clean bill of health and the borough has not advised its schools to stop using the company.

It is understood that the decision to end the contract concerns the precise legal terms between the two parties over the proportion of meat as opposed to water and other bulking products in the halal products following a complaint.

A Lancashire County Council spokeswoman said that it was seeking an emergency temporary supplier of halal products but could give no timescale for securing a new deal.

In the meantime, Muslim children are being offered suitable non-meat and vegetarian alternatives.
KQF’s boss Faruk Valli is currently on a Muslim Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
A representative of the company, which employs 30 staff, said: “We had a county council inspection two weeks ago and we failed because our paperwork was not up to date.

“We have only just been inspected by Blackburn with Darwen Council’s Environmental Health officer and they say our hygiene standards are up to scratch.

“We have no idea why the contract was terminated.

“When our managing director gets back we hope to correct any issues and get back to supplying schools Lancashire wide with halal meat as it is the children that are suffering.

“We are concerned this could seriously damage our reputation.”

Roger Eakhurst, the council's assistant director for catering, said: “The health and safety of pupils must always come first in the provision of any supplies to our school kitchens and so we took immediate action.
“We hope to re-establish a supply of halal meat as soon as possible and in the meantime we hope parents and children will bear with us."

Blackburn with Darwen schools chief Coun Tony Humphrys said: “The council recently became aware that a major catering provider to schools in Blackburn with Darwen has ceased using the Blackburn based provider of Halal meat on the basis of an audit which found breaches in relation to their specified contract with the company.

“We had only inspected the premises in September but following the concerns, we inspected the premises again and are satisfied that there is currently no risk to health.”

link

Europe Turns Churches into Mosques

Bouchra Ismaili, a Rotterdam city councilman: "Listen up, crazy freaks, we're here to stay. You're the foreigners here, with Allah on my side I'm not afraid of anything. Take my advice: convert to Islam, and you will find peace".

 he Middle East is full of churches turned into Islamic sites, like the Umayyad in Damascus, the Ibn Tulun in Cairo and the cathedral of St. Sophia in Instanbul.

In Hevron and on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, the Muslims built their sites on the Jewish ones.
A sad prophecy of the writer Emile Cioran once cast a sinister prophecy on Europe: “The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque”.

This is now a reality. But unlike the Middle East, where non-Muslim sites were razed or violently converted to Islam, in Europe this process is voluntary.

The church of Saint-Eloi in the French region of Vierzon will soon become a mosque. The diocese of Bourges has put on sale the church and a Muslim organization, l’Association des Marocains, made the most generous offer to buy the site.

The church of Saint-Eloi is located in an area inhabited by Turks and Moroccans. It’s the “de-Christianization” of Europe, which is naturally followed by its gradual Islamization and increasing anti-Semitism. Of 27.000 inhabitants in the town of Vierzon, only 300 go to church once a week.
In the past decade, French Catholic bishops formally closed more than 60 churches, many of which are destined to become mosques, according to the research conducted by the newspaper La Croix.
According to a recent report of the US Pew Center, Islam is already “the fastest-growing religion in Europe,” where the number of Muslims has tripled over the past 30 years. One third of all European children will be born to Muslim families by 2025.

Demography is the most important symptom of exhaustion: without a cradle, you can't sustain a civilization.
To understand this historic process one has to see the number of churches converted into mosques.
In the Netherlands, more than 250 buildings where Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists have prayed for centuries, have changed owners. Like the Fatih Camii Mosque in Amsterdam, which once was a Catholic church, the Saint Ignatius. Or the church of S. Vincentius, which was put on sale along with the benches, the crucifixes and the chandeliers. Today more than half of the Dutch population is “buitenkerkelijk”, it means free from any religious affiliation, as well as Catholics decreased by 70 percent.

Islam is now considered the “most widely practiced religion” in the Netherlands. The Oude Kerk, the oldest church in Amsterdam, built in 1309, stands solidly in the heart of downtown. Around it is the red-light district with the South American and Eastern European prostitutes knocking on the glass to attract the attention of passersby. The Neuwe Kerk, the church where the Dutch kings were crowned, is a museum. The only "church" in the city that is crowded is that of Scientology, which offers free stress tests.

4,400 church buildings remain in the Netherlands. Each week, two close their doors forever. A synagogue in The Hague was turned into the al Aqsa Mosque.

In Duisburg, Germany, the Catholic church closed six churches. In Marxloh, the only church that survives, that of St. Peter and Paul, will close at the end of 2012. In Germany 400 churches have been closed.
The municpality of Antwerp, Belgium, proposed to transform the empty churches into mosques. Scandinavia lives the same phenomenon. To cite one case, the Swedish churches of St. Olfos is used by the Muslims. The main mosque in Dublin is a former Presbyterian church.

In England, 10.000 churches have been closed since 1960. By 2020, another 4.000 churches will close while there will be, it is predicted, 1.700 new mosques, many of which will arise on former churches.


After the “God is dead” of Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe is going to adopt the Koranic “there is no God but Allah".


To mention just some churches turned into mosques, there is the Central Mosque of Brent, the St. Marks Cathedral which is now called New Peckam Mosque and the former Wesleyan Methodist Church. The mosque of Disbury in Manchester was a Methodist church, and a Catholic church in Sydney, Nova Scotia, will become a mosque. In Clitheroe, Lancashire, the municipal authorities have granted permission to turn an Anglican church into a mosque.

After the “God is dead” of Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe is going to adopt the Koranic “there is no God but Allah”. And the old Gregorian chants will be substituted by the muezzin.

Europe's tragedy is embodied by the sterile blocks of concrete and glass of the European Union in Bruxelles. Symbols of the moral emptiness within. Meanwhile the top seven baby boys’ names in Brussels are Mohammed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.

A couple of years ago I visited Rotterdam, the Dutch industrial polmon. Everywhere are casbah-cafes, travel agencies offering flights to Rabat and Casablanca, and posters expressing solidarity with Hamas. Most of the population are immigrants, and the city has the tallest and most imposing mosque in Europe.

The most striking thing when one arrives in the city by train are the fascinating mosques framed by the green, luxuriant, wooded, watery countryside. Rotterdam has the tallest minarets in Europe. The city was buzzing when the newspapers published a letter by Bouchra Ismaili, a Rotterdam city councilman: "Listen up, crazy freaks, we're here to stay. You're the foreigners here, with Allah on my side I'm not afraid of anything. Take my advice: convert to Islam, and you will find peace".

A French friend showed me one of Rotterdam's main square, where there is a mosque with Arabic writing outside. "That used to be a church".

Is Islam the destiny for the world's most affluent, relaxed and pacified societies which opted for self-liquidation? And will this decadent, semi-Islamicized Frankestein named "Europe" declare war on Israel?

link

RUSSIA TV VISITS MUSLIM NO-GO ZONES IN PARIS……..

160 gravestones desecrated in Senegal’s Christian cemeteries...& Harper Just Gave Them 32 Million Bucks

 Looks like that money was well spent!

Roman Catholic church officials say nearly 160 graves have been desecrated in the two largest Christian cemeteries in Senegal’s capital.

The Rev. Roger Gomis, head of communications for the archdiocese of Dakar, said Thursday that crucifixes had been torn off of gravestones in Christian cemeteries.

 Senegal is a predominantly Muslim country in western Africa

Seven suspected of recruiting militants arrested in Belgium

Belgian authorities arrested seven people on Wednesday suspected of recruiting young Muslims in Brussels to join Islamic militants fighting in Africa, federal prosecutors said.

The investigation was triggered when a Belgian national was detained at the Somali border in August 2011 and found to be wanting to join Somalia's al Shabaab militants.

The arrests of six people of Moroccan and African origin and one Belgian national followed house searches in several parts of Brussels, the prosecutors said.

The suspects were being questioned, a spokesman for the federal prosecution said, declining to give further details.

Al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked group, still controls vast rural parts of Somalia, although they have lost their grip on major cities in the country after an African Union-led offensive allowed the central government to regain control.

link

Opposites attract Muslims

With two major Arab leaders addressing the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York, an Egyptian-born former Muslim claims Americans now more than ever need to understand the true agenda of Islam.


Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for a "new world order," and Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi rejected free speech rights this week at the U.N. General Assembly.

Nonie Darwish, founder of Arabs for Israel and author of The Devil We Don't Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle East, says anti-American comments at the U.N. give rise for further concern of the growing Islamic influence around the world.

"Wherever Islam goes and … becomes a strong minority, there's going to be a demand for sharia law," she asserts. "If they don't get it, they're going to have a separatist movement, and I'm predicting England will have a Chechnya maybe in 10, 20 years. France will have a Chechnya. I hope this will never happen to America."
Darwish, who is the daughter of an Egyptian Army lieutenant general, explains that Muslims are trained to believe two opposite ideas at the same time.

"For instance, Islam is a religion of peace. At the same time, [they] will say go kill the Jews and the Christians because we have to go conquer them, and it's ok to do terrorism for that purpose, for that cause -- for the cause of Jihad," the Arabs for Israel founder poses.

She submits there is no such thing as moderate Islam in the Middle East, but the so-called moderates who may exist elsewhere enable radical Islamists.

link

Michael Coren: It is islam that should apologize

Golden Dawn Opens Office in New York

By Katerina Nikolas

Greece's ultra-nationalist party Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi) has inaugurated a new office in New York City, to reach out to the Greek diaspora. A branch of the political party is already operational in Melbourne, Australia.

According to Ekathimerini two polls this weekend have placed Golden Dawn as the third political party in Greece, on nine percent of the vote. Their rise in popularity, which Digital Journal reported as standing at 22 percent, means that the ultra-nationalist party has now overtaken PASOK in public opinion.

Golden Dawn is now reaching out to the Greek diaspora, opening a branch of the political party in New York City. The party's New York website says:
"The Golden Dawn is the only political party in Greece that unapologetically stands for the sovereignty, security, and dignity of the Greek people. The party intends to reverse decades of unlimited third world immigration which has brought crime, unemployment, disease and possibly terrorism to the once peaceful Greek cities.

"We stand with the Greek people who have been driven to poverty and despair by the imposition of the genocidal IMF and European Union austerity policies that are decimating the population and turning Greece into a slave state.

"Our goals are to promote and support the Golden Dawn’s nationalist ideals and vision for Greece among the Greek diaspora. We must resist and overcome the genocidal multi- culturalist, and anti-Hellenic agenda of the New World Order."

Thus far the party has collected medicines, food and clothing from the diaspora in the U.S. to send to Greece.

Source: Digital Journal

Syrian Rebels Ransack Christian Churches

Shocking images have emerged which show the aftermath of Christian churches ransacked by NATO-backed Syrian rebels, illustrating once again how western powers are supporting Muslim extremists in their bid to achieve regime change in the middle east.

A photograph provided to us by a Christian woman in Homs, scene of some of the bloodiest clashes of the conflict, shows a member of the Free Syrian Army posing with a looted Catholic cross in one hand and a gun in the other while wearing a priest's robe.


"Everyone knows simply removing these garments from the church is a sin. The priest is the only one who wears them too. They even pray before putting them on. Him posing in front of the funeral car as well is disgusting to the max," our source told us.

"They destroyed the church and went in to film it. I know this for a fact."

"The Robes can only be worn by Deacons or Priests or Sub-Deacons, and they a Christian man wouldn't hold a Cross in one hand and a gun in another," the woman adds.

Another image shows a ransacked church in Bustan al-Diwan (Old Homs).
While Syrian rebels busy themselves ransacking Christian churches, they also rallying around the Al-Qaeda flag just as their counterparts did in Libya.

This video shows Syrian "activists" flying the Al-Qaeda flag during an anti-Assad protest in the northern Syrian town of Binnish.

In another clip, armed Syrian rebels address the camera standing behind a table draped with the black Al-Qaeda flag.

Last month we highlighted a photo published by French news agency AFP shows a Syrian rebel wearing the Al-Qaeda flag on his arm accompanying UN observers in the village of Azzara.
Why are western governments who are supposed to be engaged in a 'war on terror' against radical Muslim terrorists handing those very same terrorists control over entire countries?

A third image sent by our source shows another place of worship, Church Um Al Zinar, with part of its roof missing thanks to Syrian rebels who have been portrayed by the international media as saints despite their involvement in terrorist bombings and massacres.

The latest terror attack carried out by rebels occurred earlier today when gunmen stormed a pro-government TV station, bombing buildings and shooting dead three employees.
The sight of NATO-backed rebels desecrating Christian places of worship is becoming a recurring theme.

By Paul Joseph Watson
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk

 The Silence is deafening

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is a priest of the Church of England

 We need a few more like Dr Peter Mullen to lift the vale of  Dhimmitude that the west is so happy to promote 

Of course the Arab Spring has brought forth monsters

I look at this morning’s front page: “Arab Spring spawns new generation of UK terrorists”. Are we supposed to be surprised by this?

 I was called all the rude names under the sun for mocking these velvet revolutions in Egypt and Libya. All those bright Westernised kids on their mobile phones preaching the gospel of “democracy”, while the serious revolutionaries – the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Salafists, Sunni fundamentalists and other armed-to-the-teeth totalitarians – were biding their time.

It brought back recollections of our Romantic poets’ enthusiasm for the French Revolution. Coleridge, Southey and their barmy ideas of a utopian “pantocracy”. And above all, weary Willie Wordsworth’s approbation, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive; and to be young was very heaven.” He changed his tune in 1793 when the reign of terror broke out and Madame Guillotine toured the land, cutting off heads, under the auspices of “The Committee for Public Safety.”

Why has it taken the Western media so long to wake up to the fact that there is a fundamentalist religious and political uprising in a score of countries? And that this is an existential threat to the West? Why do The Guardian and the Today Programme and the rest of the ignoramus bien pensants laud the “activists” in Syria, as if the terrible events taking place there are so easily polarised between nice rebels and nasty Assad?
Events in Libya have already turned sour with attacks on British officials by the same people we were aiding and abetting just a few months ago. Egypt is firming up ties with Iran. No wonder the Israelis have posted tanks on the edge of the Sinai. Yemen is a no-go area for everyone who is not a paid-up member of al Qaeda.

Meanwhile this hideous reactionary revolution across north Africa and the whole of the Middle East is being appeased by Western statesmen who are really the successors of Baldwin and Chamberlain. And no one dare criticise this religiously inspired thuggery for fear of being thought politically incorrect.

I don’t mind dying. Really, I don’t. But I don’t want to die of ignorance and stupidity.

link 

Religious threats to free speech in Britain

A man in Boston, Lincolnshire has been warned by the police that if he puts up a small poster in his window that says "religions are fairy stories for adults" he could face arrest.

 

John Richards was told by officers that the poster could breach the Public Order Act by "distressing" passers by. But Mr Richards is defiant and says he will put up the poster anyway, as not to do so implies a threat to free speech.

He told The Boston Standard: "The police said I could be arrested if somebody complained and said they were insulted, but the sign was up two years ago and nobody responded or smashed the window. I am an atheist and I feel people are being misled by religion. 

I wanted to show people that if they thought they were alone there was at least one other person who thought that. I accept that the police emphasised the words could lead to an arrest but the implication is a threat to free speech which surely should be fought."

The Public Order Act dictates that it is an offence to display any sign which is threatening, abusive or insulting, and could cause distress. The NSS is currently campaigning to have the "insulting" element of this law removed.

King’s Church Manchester to host cleric who thinks converts to Christianity deserve death

This Saturday, King’s Church Manchester will be hosting Muhammad Musa Al-Shareef, a Saudi cleric who believes that Muslim converts to Christianity should be killed for abandoning Islam, and that human rights are an invention of “the Christians, the atheists and the fornicators“.

links
http://www.makingjesusfamous.org/

http://www.palestinianforum.co.uk/en/news/pfb-news/169-the-eighth-annual-palestine-day%E2%80%A6

A ban on bangers: Hundreds of school pupils denied pork because of 'religious reasons'

Roast pork and sausages have always been a staple of British diets.

But now hundreds of school children will be denied them for school lunches because of 'religious reasons'.

Pork, which is not eaten by devout Jews or Muslims, has been banned by councils across the country to satisfy the needs of staff and pupils who are not allowed contact with it.

However, it is thought many schools do not serve halal or kosher meat, so Jewish and Muslim children would not be able to eat it anyway.

The decision has been criticised by MPs who have said the ban will cause unnecessary resentment among pupils and religious leaders who said they never asked for a ban in the first place.

John Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said it was simply not an issue and added that Jews of a certain level would choose not to eat in non-kosher environments.

Children at mainstream school who are bothered would probably have packed lunches,' he said to the Sunday Telegraph.

'Children who are comfortable with using the same cutlery and crockery as everyone else would choose their dishes from the options available. It is live and let live - we are certainly not calling for this.'

Muslim leaders have only ever asked that halal and non-halal meat be handled separately in an effort to avoid any cross contamination and for clear labelling when serving school dinners.
MP Philip Davies has said the ban could cause resentment among pupils

MP Philip Davies has said the ban could cause resentment among pupils

Haringey Council, north London, recently issued advice to all its schools and recommended a ban to meet the needs of staff and pupils who are not allowed contact with pork for religious reasons.

Figures supplied by school caterer Pabulum, in the south-east of England, show that around 20 of the 48 schools it supplied chose non-pork options.

In Haringey's infant, junior and primary schools, 37 out of 47 have a no pork rule. In Bradford 24 out of 160 schools choose not to have pork and in Newham, east London, 25 out of 75 opt out.

Luton has 23 out of 57 schools which choose not to supply pork to pupils and in Tower Hamlets, east London, 85 out of 90 do not offer a pork option. All schools offer a vegetarian option.

Conservative MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire, Philip Davies, who has campaigned for clearer labelling on meat products said the bans were 'misguided political correctness'.

He said he fully believed that pupils should be able to choose not to have pork but added that it was unfair to deny those with no objection to the meat.

Mr Davies said decisions like these could cause resentment among pupils and added that he hoped schools would change their stance.

Stewart Houston, chief executive of the National Pig Association said the decision by schools was disappointing and added that sausages and roast pork were a staple of British diets.

link

Europe battles hate crimes against Christians

 

What was the most vilified religion in Scotland in 2010-2011? Not Islam – only 2.1 percent of religious hate crimes were directed against Muslims. Not Judaism – only 2.3 percent were directed against Jews. According to a report by the Scottish government, 95 percent of all religious hate crimes were directed against Christians.

"These statistics show the shameful reality of religious hate crime in Scotland,” the Minister for Community Safety, Roseanna Cunningham, declared last year. “Like racism, this kind of behaviour simply shouldn't be happening in a modern Scotland but sadly, it seems there are still those who think hatred on the basis of religion is acceptable.”

Christians are also the targets of most religious hate crimes in France. A report released last year showed that 84 percent of cases of religious vandalism had targeted Christian sites in 2010 – an increase of 96 percent in two years. Two hundred and fourteen cemeteries were vandalized, along with 272 chapels, 26 war memorials and 10 crosses.

Christian monuments are not the only targets. Earlier this month the hacker group Anonymous crashed the Vatican website, leaving a message: “Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organization spreads around the world."

The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, an Austrian NGO, documents the growing problem of Christian persecution in Europe in a recently-released annual report.

According to its director, Dr Gudrun Kugler, all Christian denominations in Europe face “a broad phenomena of intolerance and discrimination caused by those who reject and disrespect Christianity as a whole: radical lobbies which have gone overboard, seeking to limit the practice of the Christian religion and with it fundamental rights and freedoms.”

Is she over-dramatising the issue? Dr Kugler responds that many religious leaders and politicians in Europe have been hitting the alarm bell.

Last year Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, a senior Russian Orthodox prelate with a PhD from Oxford, warned that there is a “basic danger of attempting to use religious diversity as an excuse to exclude signs of Christian civilization from the public and political realities of the continent, as though this would make our continent friendlier towards non-Christians.”

And a Muslim government minister in the UK, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, admitted that Christianity was under siege by militant secularism in a landmark speech earlier this year.

“I see it in United Kingdom and I see it in Europe: spirituality suppressed; divinity downgraded… at its core and in its instincts [militant secularism] is deeply intolerant. It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes – denying people the right to a religious identity and failing to understand the relationship between religious loyalty and loyalty to the state.”

Dr Kugler admits that the hardships faced by European Christians are minor compared to the daily threats of murder, beating, imprisonment and torture in countries like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. But, she says, “History teaches to address injustices before they become a slippery slope towards even greater injustices.”

Dr Kugler says that the growing intolerance and discrimination take several forms.

Human rights violations and discrimination. Christian are being denied the right to educate their children when there is a conflict between the parents’ convictions and state required sex education. The Catholic Church had to shut down adoption agencies in the UK because they were being forced to accept same-sex couples as adoptive parents.

Workplace discrimination. French pharmacists are required to sell the “morning after” pill which causes an early abortion. Midwives and nurses in Scotland must oversee abortions. Workers in the UK are threatened with dismissal for wearing crosses.

Marginalization and negative stereotyping. The media is constantly projecting hostile images of Christians and Christian values. The Norwegian killer Andres Breivik was instantaneously and wrongly called a “Christian fundamentalist” even though he had no connections with any mainstream Christian churches. Last July the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe even passed a resolution to “encourage the media not to spread prejudices against Christians and to combat negative stereotyping”.

Hate crimes. Violence against Christian sites and clerics is becoming more common. Churches, shrines and cemeteries are often torched or desecrated. “It is indisputable that hate crimes against Christians occur in the OSCE region,” Janez Lenarčič, of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, told a conference in Rome last year. “Such attacks instil fear, not just in the individuals they target directly, but also in the wider community, particularly where the Christian community in question belongs to a minority.”

But if most European countries are at least nominally Christian, isn’t it ridiculous to talk about a vilified minority? Wrong, says Dr Kugler. It is not nominal Christians who are getting the sharp end of the stick, but people who take the precepts of Christianity seriously. And these are a minority.

“South African blacks were not a minority when they suffered from apartheid. Also women always constituted a majority in history. Rocco Buttiglione was not accepted as an EU commissioner due to his adherence to Christianity, the majority faith. It is true that intolerance and discrimination more often affect minorities. More essential than numbers is power: who sets the tone, who is listened to, and who creates the agenda. Every day Europe’s majority faith is being treated disrespectfully; its faithful are faced with hostility and cultural animosity; and its free exercise is confronted with unjust limitations.”

Amazingly, statistics on “Christianophobia” are sketchy, a failure which Dr Kugler’s group is trying to set right. It acts as a clearinghouse, logging incidents of discrimination and intolerance which have been reported in the media.

As she points out, people need to know these grim stories to ensure that history does not repeat itself. In 2010, graffiti at the University of Barcelona sparked a minor controversy in Spain. “Los cristianos son como ratas. Apunta bien,” it said. “Christian are like rats. Shoot straight.” This happened in a country where thousands of Christians were shot like rats in the Spanish Civil War just because they went to Mass. Europe cannot afford to let this happen ever again.

link