Fr. Youssef Yaacoub dates his troubles from June 9, 2014. That was the day the Islamic State group reached southeast Mosul, Iraq, shooting guns in the air and announcing, from a loudspeaker at a mosque, "We are here."

"We are creating a caliphate. We will rule by Sharia law," said a booming voice. "Those who don't abide by the law will be killed." That included Christians who refuse to convert to Islam.

There are 7.5 million Christians in the Middle East, who live under constant threat of death and humiliation. Danish journalist Klaus Wivel (not a Christian himself) asks: What is the story on the ground and why are so few journalists covering it? Why aren't we in the West doing more to defend the human rights of this beleaguered minority?

Christians in the Levant, especially those in Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, are facing grave challenges that are either misunderstood or ignored in the West. In recent years, protecting them or even acknowledging their existence has only been a concern of policy-makers or advocacy groups when it has fit their accepted narratives or political agendas for the region.

There is but one God, yet different forms of Islam are fighting for their own version of him.

In the summer of 2013, the international Islamic magazine al-Bayan published its Ramadan issue with a striking cover. Flanked by titles on the Qur’anic and Biblical figure Haman, jihad and the great battles won by Muslims in the month of Ramadan, and an interview with the Iraqi Islamist intellectual ‘Imad al-Din Khalil, the image that the editors chose for the cover article was clearly meant to cause controversy. Casually strewn across a map of the Middle East and North Africa was a simple sibha, a chain of beads used to count repetitive prayers known collectively as adhkar. In recent years, the sibha has come to be associated as a marker of Sufi Mulims, given that non-Sufi reformist Muslims of various stripes have stipulated that it constitutes an innovation in worship and thus a straying from the perfect path laid down by the Prophet himself for praising God. Attached to the end of this sibha, where a bead or other decoration might normally be located, was a small American flag, resembling those lapel pins that US government officials began to wear following 9/11. If the implications of the image itself were not clear, the headline on which it sat most certainly was: “American Infiltration through the Sufi zawiyas.”

Discussion with Nicholas Pelham, author of the "Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East”.

The archenemies Iran and Saudi Arabia are battling for supremacy in the Middle East and are carrying out their struggle in proxy wars in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Domestically, though, the two countries are facing remarkably similar problems.

A new documentary by British-Iraqi director Hoda Yahya Elsoudani tackles the Sunni-Shia divide from the perspective of two young sisters.

Civil wars in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq have largely reinforced the perception of an intractable Sunni-Shia conflict. In this outlook, religious heritage becomes the singular lens through which political identity and strife in the region are interpreted. The sectarian framework has been reinforced at all levels of discourse in the United States, including by President Barack Obama, who in his 2016 State of the Union address described the current tensions as an ongoing conflict that has supposedly existed almost since the beginning of Islamic history.

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement that formed Iraq, Syria and the other fragile nations of the modern Middle East. The past few weeks have provided dramatic new evidence, if more were needed, that the old colonial framework created by Britain and France isn’t working.

When the Arab Spring began, the Christians of the Middle East hoped they would soon be considered equal to the region's Muslims. But contrary to their expectations, discrimination against Christians has risen to new heights in the wake of the uprisings. In February, an international conference convened in Rome to take stock of their plight. It revealed that attacks against Syriac and Catholic churches in Iraq have become more frequent in recent years, and the country's Christian population has shrunk from 2 million in the early 20th century to less than half a million today.

War and persecution has led to a haemorrhaging of Christians from the Middle East, particularly from Syria and Iraq. A new report highlights what the region stands to lose should Christians continue to leave.The report, compiled by a trio of Christian charities and a university, argues that Christians are an essential part of Middle Eastern history and culture, and that they continue to contribute powerfully to society, particularly in the fields of education, medicine, science and engineering.