Taki: our leaders are weak and powerless in the face of religious fanatics

This Christmas our thoughts need to be with our fellow Christians who are being threatened in the Bible lands. No ifs or buts about it, they are being told either to join the Sunni-led opposition to Assad and renounce Christianity or die. After decades of protection by a secular-leaning dictatorship, Christians are being given ultimatums by the Saudi-financed jihadists and face a very dark future.  There has already been Christian cleansing in Syria, especially in Homs, where 90 per cent of the Christians have fled the city for Assad-controlled areas near the Lebanese border.

In Iraq things are not much better. Cities such as Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam’s home town, were once vital centres of Christianity. No longer. Iraq’s Christian population, estimated to have been two million, has fallen by more than half. Thank you, George W. Bush, a great Christian thinker, at least in Texas. In Egypt, there are at least ten million Christian Copts, now treated as third-class citizens and mostly confined to squalid quarters. Things have improved in Egypt since the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood gang, but rest assured that if the Salafists have their say, and they still do with the military in power, the Christians are doomed in the long run.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, fuggeraboutit where Christians are concerned. What I don’t understand is how we — Americans and Europeans — can sit comfortably in our ivory towers and dispense wealth to these crappy countries while their religious fanatics persecute people who believe in our Lord Jesus. Once upon a time, Saudi Arabia’s Mecca and Medina had a thriving Christian and Jewish population. They were finished off centuries ago, when a single gunboat could have forced the camel-drivers to lick our boots and keep licking them until the last Jew or Christian was safe.