Morocco Among the Safest Countries for Christians in the Arab World: report

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Tarik El Barakah is a journalist and Morocco World News correspondent in Rabat.
Morocco Among the Safest Countries for Christians in the Arab World: report
Rabat – Morocco is among the most religiously tolerant countries in the Arab World and one of the safest for Christians, according to an international organization.
Open Doors, a non-profit organization that focuses on serving persecuted Christians, did not include Morocco in its list of the top 50 countries where Christians face the most persecution for their faith.

According to Open Doors, Morocco and Bahrain are the two Arab countries to stay off the list for being more ‘tolerant’ towards the Christian religion.

However, all the remaining Arab countries were included in the list for imposing severe religious restrictions on Christians.

The non-profit identifies Christian persecution as “any hostility experienced from the world as a result of one’s identification as a Christian.

This might include beatings, physical torture, confinement, isolation, rape, severe punishment, imprisonment, slavery, discrimination in education and employment, and even death.

Open Doors said that the most rapidly growing areas of prosecution in the 2015 World Watch list are African countries, especially in Sub-Sahara Africa.

It added that Islamic extremism is by far the most significant persecution “engine”, with forty of the fifty countries on the World Watch list affected by this kind of persecution.

“Under the influence of ISIS, radical sentiments have increased in the Middle East. Many historically Christian communities have been forced to flee”, says the non-profit in their report.

More than 140,000 Christians have been forced to flee from their homes since the terrorist organization “Islamic State”, formerly known as ISIS or ISIL, took over swaths of land in Iraq last year.

North Korea topped the 2015 World Watch List for the 13th consecutive year.

“Nothing has changed for Christians since Kim Jong Un took over power,” according to the non-profit.

Somalia was ranked as the second most difficult place to be a Christian in the world, followed by Iraq in third place.

According to Open Doors, the list is based on detailed information provided by Open Doors co-workers in over 65 countries, as well as by independent experts.

Data is gathered on five spheres of life – private, family, community, national and church life – plus a sixth sphere measuring the degree of violence.

http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/01/150048/morocco-among-the-safest-countries-for-christians-in-the-arab-world-report/