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Christianity & The Middle East: An Outlook On Current Christian-Muslim Relations For 1,400 years, individuals of the Christian and Muslim faiths have endured a history of conflict and hostility toward one another. According to Pew Research Center, Muslims are expected to grow more than twice as fast as the overall world population between 2010 and 2015. Contrastingly, Christianity is projected to have a net loss of 60 million adherents. By 2050, Muslims will be nearly as numerous as Christians, currently the world’s largest religious group at 31.4 percent of the global population. Considering the exponential growth of Islam, Christian-Muslim relations are in dire need of resolve if both groups want to see a peaceful future. “Evangelical Christians and Muslims are both focused on making converts, and that’s playing out around the world and in local neighborhoods,” said Ed Stetzer, executive director of LifeWay Research. “They are, by definition, competing faiths. When you combine that with distinctly different worldviews and understanding of God, evangelicals and Muslims start with a cultural and religious chasm between them.” Open Doors USA, a non-profit organization focused on serving persecuted Christians in more than 60 countries, reported approximately 100 million Christians are persecuted worldwide. While the vast majority of those who claim Islam as their faith are indeed peaceful people, Islamic extremism is the main source of persecution in 40 of the 50 countries on the Open Doors 2015 World Watch List (WWL). Nine of the 10 countries with the worst records for Christian persecution have populations that are at least 50 percent Muslim, according to the assessment of persecution in the Open Doors USA's WWL 2015 and population information published by the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. According to the latest report from Church In Need, a Catholic Charity focused on aiding persecuted Christians, and the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting religious freedom worldwide, Christians in the Middle East are in danger of extinction. Twelve years ago, the Middle East was home to more than 1 million Christians. Now down to a mere 275,000, Christians could completely disappear from the region within the next decade if the trend continues. With extremist groups like ISIS and the Taliban threatening Christianity’s very existence, the presence of Christians in the region is likely to be wiped off the map. A recent Christianity and The Middle East, page 2 FoxNews.com article stated, “The dwindling numbers are due to genocide, refugees fleeing to other countries, those who are internally displaced, and others hiding in plain sight and not allowing their faith to be publicly known. A dozen Christian families flee Iraq each day.” With statistics like these appearing daily in the headlines, Muslim-Christian relations are strained and if anything, confusing. With extremists on both sides declaring that the other has no right to exist and carrying out violent acts against one another, the vast majority of Christians and Muslims can coexist, but it is not a road without struggle. While only a small percentage of Muslims adhere to radical Islam, the incorrect perceptions that all Muslims are potential threats have lead to western cultures looking unfavorably at Islam. Only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam: the lowest favorability rating since 2001, according to a 2010 ABC News/Washington Post poll. According to a 2010 Time magazine poll, 28 percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and nearly one-third of the country thinks followers of Islam should be barred from running for president. A story entitled, “Interfaith Dialogue in an Age of Extremism: Revisiting Muslim-Christian Relations after 'Nostra Aetate',” on ABCNews.com in January of 2015 stated, “Muslims and Christians have had to contend with addressing the endless conflicts and bloodshed stemming from American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, competing geopolitical interests in the oil-rich gulf and the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Likewise, the rise of militant Islamism, imminent threat of terrorism, so it seems, and subsequent Islamophobic attitudes re-emerging in the West, have diminished the chances of rejuvenating meaningful dialogue between Muslims and Christians.’ Muslim and Christian relations are in serious need of sustained dialogue and more education about each other’s faiths and core beliefs. More importantly, both groups must find a common ground, partnering with each other to solve problems and bridge religious and communal differences in a period of heightened political violence and persecution . World Vision U.S. President Rich Stearns said, “We can hold deep and fundamental differences with people of other faiths, yet share mutual concerns, work together and overcome common problems. That isn’t a magic formula for world peace, but it is a first step. It is harder to hate someone when you’ve worked alongside each other. It is harder to condemn a group of people when you need them as partners. Especially now, when religion is used as an excuse for violence, we need to hear these stories of partnership showing us how faith can bring us together to save lives and promote peace.”