The Vatican's top cleric in the heart of Muslim Arabia tends to a flock of 2 million Christians spread around six desert nations. But he has to do it quietly: Most of them must still pray in secret and are forbidden to display crosses and other symbols of their faith.
From his base in the emirate of Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf, Archbishop Paul Hinder travels the Arabian Peninsula, even slipping in and out of Saudi Arabia — the birthplace of Islam, where restrictions on Christians are the toughest.
"We are tolerated, but not popular here," Hinder said in an interview in the archbishop's living quarters inside a Christian compound in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
If we treated Moslems this way, the charge of Islamophobia and intolerance would be justified. The fact is, Islam has a long way to go to even reach the level of what we are accused of being, let alone what we really are.
