If Muslims were being gunned down and bombed in western mosques by Christian fanatics, there would rightly be a tremendous outcry and Christians themselves would react with horror and fury

The narrative of victimhood comes easily to followers of Islam. They constantly bemoan the prejudice they have to endure and the oppression they suffer in the bigoted western world, where Islamophobia is supposedly rampant. Every terrorist atrocity, every blood-soaked massacre is justified by reference to imagined grievances.

But by far the greatest persecutors of other faiths are Muslim hardliners themselves. The great Caribbean writer VS Naipaul once described Islam as “sanctified rage”. The proof of those words has been graphically illustrated by a growing catalogue of barbarities committed by Islamic militants against Christians, none of them more shocking than the mass murder committed in a Catholic Church in Baghdad at the end of October, when 58 people were gunned down during an act of worship. “All of you are infidels,” said one of the killers before opening fire on the congregation. 

This kind of lethal oppression against Christians is happening all over the Muslim world. In Nigeria there has been a spate of attacks on Christian churches and clerics. In the Philippines, 11 people were injured this week in the bombing of a Catholic chapel. The totalitarian nature of Islam, which is as much a political ideology as a religious creed, means that freedom of worship is drastically restricted for other believers. 

One Pakistani woman, Asia Bibi, is now facing the death penalty for the crime of blasphemy after she allegedly insulted the prophet Mohammed. Asia Bibi says she did no such thing but only tried to defend her faith when Muslim co-workers on a farm accused her of being “unclean” and tried to convert her to Islam. 

Yet western political leaders, through a mixture of cowardice and denial, have refused to challenge the Islamic culture of persecution. In any other sphere, they make an absolute fetish of their devotion to the causes of equality and anti-discrimination. 

If Muslims were being gunned down and bombed in western mosques by Christian fanatics, there would rightly be a tremendous outcry and Christians themselves would react with horror and fury at what was perpetrated by twisted zealots in the name of their faith. But the entire political establishment remains silent, continuing to pretend that Islamophobia is the real threat to harmony.