The persecution of Christians around the world in the name of religion is a reflection of the poor state of religious freedom in too many countries (Editorial, 26 December). A report this year showed that 60% of the world’s countries were experiencing a serious decline in religious freedom, where minorities endure violence and discrimination. The way of judging any civilisation is how it treats its minorities. We should heed the great political philosopher Karl Popper, who advocated “in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant”. Popper explained: “We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
Zaki Cooper
London
The 2003 Iraq invasion was indeed a disaster for Christians in the Middle East. Syria under Assad was, according to William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain (1997), the safest place for Christians to practise their religion. This safety has virtually disappeared.
On a happier note, in Highgate, a predominantly Muslim area in Birmingham, at least 30 Muslims attended the midnight mass service in St Alban’s church and took part in wishing us a merry Christmas, some going up to the altar for a blessing. I pray that this fine gesture will become widespread.
David Craig
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire
If Herod, King of Judea, sent his soldiers to murder baby Jesus, then the Romans did not rule Judea and could not have been “threatened by Christmas” at the time (Loose canon, 27 December). The idea that later on a preacher too insignificant to come to the attention of a single Roman historian, who exhorted his followers to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”, represented such a “threat to the stability of the state that the Romans executed him” is hardly any less absurd. Even the gospels are clear that Pilate, a Roman prefect who otherwise relentlessly persecuted the Jews, found no grounds for executing Jesus (John 18:38). “The Chinese” may well feel threatened by the festival the University in Xi’an described as “western kitsch” (Report, theguardian.com, 25 December) – but “Christmas” was no threat to the Romans.
Peter McKenna
Liverpool
Giles Fraser says: “Christianity is an aggressive religion that has long historical form in picking fights and toppling dictatorships”. Which ones, Giles?
David Rainbird
Wallasey, Wirral
Neither theologians, artists nor Christians seem to appreciate that there are various sorts of stable. Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity (Jesus was not born in a stable but in a family home, theologian says, 24 December) shows a stable as westerners think of it – a free-standing, roofed, rectangular structure above ground – whereas the spot claimed to be Jesus’s birthplace beneath the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, is in a scoop into solid limestone at the base of a cave.
This exists within a subterranean complex of caves and passages, now known from archaeological excavation to extend east and southeast of the church. This was an area of civil occupation before the first church was built; and some of the “family homes” that stood there would have had rock-cut cellars that could have had many uses, including being a stable. The Rev Ian Paul is therefore drawing a false dichotomy in claiming that, because Jesus was born in a “family home”, he could not have been born in a stable.
Pastoralists still struggling to survive in the hills south of Hebron live in traditional family homes carved out of rock, with accommodation characteristically consisting of a living area with open hearth, surrounded by sleeping quarters and, at the rear, storage cells and a cave-stable. The best one I saw had a hole in the roof at ground level, through which animal feed was dropped. Livestock are overwintered in such stables.
Peter Fowler
London
