Rupert Shortt, author of Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack, has written an opinion piece in The Telegraph in which he argues that the murder of 21 Coptic Christians by Islamic State is not an isolated case but instead “the latest of countless outrages perpetrated against Christians in or near the Church’s Biblical heartlands over many years”.
“The latest victims were migrant workers from Upper Egypt. The announcement by the authorities in Cairo of retaliatory bombing raids on terrorist training camps in Libya should not blind us to an inconvenient truth – that more than 600,000 Christians have left Egypt over the past 30 years under both Islamist and supposedly secular regimes… This story reflects a broader reality: that acute hostility to Christians in the Middle East long predates the invasion of Iraq.” writes Shortt.
World Watch Monitor published a book review of Christianophobia in December 2012.