Religious Persecution on Rise

"I don't know if we will ever be able to go back to Syria. My mother wants to see her home again, but she may never be able to return."

Maria fights back the tears as she contemplates her country of birth, now wracked by fighting.

Her mother - now in her 80s - was able to flee the fighting in Syria and stay with her son in Canada.

But it is not clear whether she will return to a country where Christians and other religious minorities no longer feel safe or welcome.

The Syriac Orthodox church in west London where we speak is filled with families with similar stories to tell.

Across much of the globe, at the start of the 21st Century, religion is once again a matter of life and death - quite literally in Iraq and Syria, while elsewhere, admitting or defending your faith can land you in jail.

Meriam Ibrahim, a young Christian mother from Sudan, discovered that when she refused to renounce her faith even after she was placed on death row for "apostasy", or allegedly converting from Islam to Christianity.

Meriam - whose mother was Christian - has now started a new life in America with her husband and children, following an international outcry - but how many more Meriams are there?

On the same day that the news emerged of a Pakistani Christian couple burnt to death in a kiln by enraged Muslim villagers for apparently unwittingly burning the verses of the Koran, Prince Charles was addressing a gathering at the House of Lords on religious freedom.

The future King, who once said that he wished to be Defender of Faith, rather than Defender of the Faith on ascending the throne, made an eloquent plea for religious tolerance at home and across the world.

He spoke in a video message as the international Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, launched a global report saying that religious freedom was at risk in 60% of the world's countries and had entered a period of serious decline.

The report termed the rising tide of anti-Christian persecution in several parts of the world "catastrophic", pointing out that Christians remain the most persecuted religious minority, due partly to their geographic spread and high relative numbers.

The charity also made clear that Muslims were experiencing what it called a serious degree of persecution and discrimination, "both at the hands of other Muslims and from authoritarian governments".  Read more...