Religious freedom is easy to defend when everyone follows the majority religion. The real test is whether minorities may openly build, worship, convert and disagree.

Some of the world's oldest Christian communities have dramatically declined amid war, migration, discrimination, persecution and political instability.

ISIS attempted to destroy the Yazidi community through killings, forced conversion, abduction and sexual slavery. Thousands were displaced from their ancestral homeland.

Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims. Pakistan's law says otherwise and restricts their ability even to publicly describe their faith using ordinary Islamic terminology.

Iran's Baha'i minority faces restrictions, arrests, property seizures and discrimination because a theocratic state refuses to recognise their faith on equal terms.

Criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitism. Conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and hostility toward Jews as Jews are something entirely different.

Ancient Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa largely disappeared during the twentieth century through a complex mixture of migration, conflict, nationalism, discrimination and persecution.

The Muslim world is not one homogeneous bloc. Sunni–Shia rivalry has produced discrimination, political conflict and repeated episodes of sectarian violence.