Daniel Pipes formulates a question; in connection with the recent Swiss referendum on banning the building of minarets, he writes that...
... it raises delicate issues of reciprocity in Muslim-Christian relations. A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, Qatar's first-ever church, opened last year, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple, or signboard. Rosary's priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: "The idea is to be discreet because we don't want to inflame any sensitivities." And when the Christians of a town in upper Egypt, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of "laborious negotiation, pleading and grappling with the authorities", won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a mob of about 200 Muslims attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building secret churches.
Why, the Catholic Church and others are asking, should Christians suffer such indignities while Muslims enjoy full rights in historically Christian countries? The Swiss vote fits into this new spirit.
Pipes volunteers no answer to the question, but you'd expect him to know what the answer is. Christians shouldn't suffer such indignities, nor should anyone else. As well as being historically Christian, the countries in question are pluralist democracies, in which policy on these questions should be governed not by some notion of tit-for-tat illiberalism but by traditional liberal norms underwriting the freedom of religion.