Apart from the remaining communist countries, there are now intensifying attacks on religious minorities, mostly Christians, throughout the Islamic belt from Morocco on the Atlantic eastward through to the Southern Philippines. While Islam has often been more tolerant than Christianity, and countries such as Jordan and Kuwait remain so, in many areas this tolerance has collapsed. In Saudi Arabia, any non-Islamic or dissident Islamic religious expression is forbidden. Christian meetings are outlawed and worship services held anywhere other than in the embassies of powerful countries will be raided by the mutawa, the religious police, and their members imprisoned. Any Saudi who seeks to leave Islam faces the real prospect of death. As in countries such as Mauritania, the Comorros Islands, and Sudan, this threat is not only from vigilantes, but part of the legal code itself.
In Iran and Pakistan, the threat comes from vigilantes with greater or lesser complicity by the government. In Iran there are strong indications that, apart from the persecution of the Bah'ai, government death squads have abetted the torture and assassination of Protestant leaders in recent years.
Elsewhere the agent of repression is mob violence, often prompted by radical Islamicist leaders. This is true in Egypt, where the Coptic Church is increasingly subject to church burnings and local massacres. It is widespread in Nigeria, in Liberia, Ghana, and the Philippines. In Pakistan in 1997 one Christian town, Shantinagar (population 20,000), was razed by fanatics. In Indonesia, which has long been a place of toleration between Muslims, Christians, and other minorities, there has been an epidemic of church burnings. There are also direct attacks on religious minorities by radical Islamic terrorists in Algeria, the Philippines, Turkey, and Egypt.
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