Christians in Middle East increasingly worried

"The attack on the Catholic Church in Baghdad, explicitly by Al-Qaeda, that's unusual. And Al-Qaeda has followed up on that with saying that because of events in Egypt, all Christians in the Middle East are now legitimate targets for attack. That sort of explicit terrorist threat is relatively new, but with the increasing power of more radical forms of Islam, the Christians in that area and even in North Africa but certainly in the Levant, also over into Iran, Christians are feeling more and more threatened. And in my contacts, my conversations with them, there is a level of tension, anxiety, and fear that you did not see 20 years ago, 30 years ago."

Maybe it was unusual in that the terrorists stormed the Church and initially held the Christians hostage and made demands, but Churches in Iraq have been attacked since 2004.