Did you have a Merry Christmas? If so, chances are you are not a Christian in the Middle East or many other parts of the world.

Under the headline "Christianity 'close to extinction' in Middle East," London's Telegraphreported this week on the findings of a shocking new study by a British think tank known as Civitas: the Institute for the Study of Civil Society.

The new study is entitled "Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack," thereby making the foundational point that — as opposed to the purported problem of "Islamophobia" manufactured by Islamic supremacists to cow and induce Christians and other infidels to submit to their dictates — followers of Christ are truly being persecuted in much of the planet.

Civitas puts it this way: "It is generally accepted that many faith-based groups face discrimination or persecution to some degree. A far less widely grasped fact is that Christians are targeted more than any other body of believers."

As the Telegraph observed, the report draws on published estimates showing that as many as "200 million Christians, or 10 percent of Christians worldwide, are ‘socially disadvantaged, harassed or actively oppressed for their beliefs.'" And "between a half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left the region or been killed in the past century."

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