Why should it be anti-Muslim or "Islamophobic" to write about the effects of jihad or the conservative Muslim treatment of unbelievers? The facts are well established within international bodies, NGOs, national commissions, and verifiable journalistic reports. Reformist Muslims themselves are highly critical of the discriminatory laws and behaviours in countries from which they or their forebearers originated.

Indeed, it is precisely Muslims of a reformist and liberal bent who are most vocal about radical restrictions on the values that other Muslims claim are universal.

Let us be clear. No doubt, there will probably always be people, call them the real "Islamophobes", who will use problems within Muslim states or communities to try to tar Islam or Muslims as a whole. But these and other issues still need to be faced as authentic human rights concerns.

A particularly widespread problem for Christians in Muslim countries is the ban on Christian proselytization.... While Christian and secular countries rightly permit Muslims to preach, convert, and instruct non-Muslims, 25 Muslim states forbid proselytization and have laws saying that Muslims who convert to another faith may be put to death as apostates.

Liberalized versions of Islam have in the past few decades been suppressed by fundamentalist takeovers of entire societies. It is therefore hard to believe that countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey will return quickly to the moderation they had developed in the previous century. If there is hope for good relations between non-Muslims and Muslims, it must rest, as has already begun, with the Muslims in liberal democracies.... The British organization Muslims Against Antisemitism, is a shining example; in America, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy is another. They should be treasured and helped.

Preliminary reports from Egyptian authorities said that all three fires appeared to be accidents related to electrical or circuit failures, not arson.... General opinion among Christians, however, is that the fires were "not a coincidence."

"The fire started from the wooden ceiling of the adjacent hall." Video footage, he added, indicated that something from the market behind the church was hurled onto its roof. — Fr. Samuel, St. George Church in Mansoura, World Watch Monitor, November 11, 2019.

"Terrorists change their operations, from bombings to burning." — Fr. Ephraim Youssef, a priest at St. George Church in Mansoura, World Watch Monitor, November 11, 2019.

After initial hesitations the elite regained its unity by responding in the best way it knows, not to say the only way it knows: a brutal crackdown that claimed hundreds of lives and over 10,000 arrests.

Translated into simple terms, Khamenei is calling on the "prosperous 30 percent" not to take their current well-being for granted and to help the regime crush the mass of the poor who wish to upset the apple cart.

The danger to [the Shah's] regime came from urban middle classes that in any society do not remain content with economic prosperity and social freedoms for long; they always end up demanding political rights commensurate with their economic and social status.

[I]f he [Khamenei] manages to crush the 70 percent, thus removing their threat, he would face the 30 percent's increasing demands for social and political freedoms no clerical regime can grant. And, if he fails, the 30 percent in question will look for someone else who can do for them what the Khomeinist regime cannot. In either case, the "Supreme Guide" is playing a losing game.