The Last Supper by Klaus Wivel New Vessel Press, £11.99 Forsaken by Daniel Williams OR Books, £5 “Today we are still alive, but tomorrow is uncertain. Please pray for us.” Those are the words of a Syrian priest, written shortly before he was kidnapped by ISIS. They could also serve as a two-sentence summary of

Mother Teresa’s care home in Yemen’s southern city of Aden was opened in 1992, when its saintly founder was herself ailing. Sixty people, all elderly and many wheelchair-bound, were given shelter there by nuns from India and Africa. Some of those patients were witnesses to the ghastly massacre visited on their carers earlier this month

The four nuns served the vulnerable without regard to politics. But they were caught in the middle of Yemen’s disastrous civil war

The Middle East is more polarised along religious lines than ever before. Yet recent history shows the region can return to the enlightened tolerance it once enjoyed

Across the Middle East today, non-Muslim minorities are on the retreat. Let the numbers alone tell the story. Christians in Iraq comprised eight per cent in 1987 and are one per cent today. The mysterious Mandaeans, who once kept alive Babylonian traditions and a Gnostic faith in the Iraqi Marshes, have shrunk by more than

Across the Middle East today, non-Muslim minorities are on the retreat. Let the numbers alone tell the story. Christians in Iraq comprised eight per cent in 1987 and are one per cent today. The mysterious Mandaeans, who once kept alive Babylonian traditions and a Gnostic faith in the Iraqi Marshes, have shrunk by more than

The Middle East is increasingly a place to conceal one’s religion