On May 26, a 22-year-old man was charged with alleged hate crimes committed against the St. Catherine of Siena Church and its neighboring elementary school in Mississauga, Ontario.

Iqbal Hessan, whose first and last name are Muslim, faces five counts of mischief and over $5,000 in fines.

On May 20, the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue that stands in front of the church was covered in black paint and the fingers of its outstretched arms were broken off. Behind the church, graffiti with the words “There is no Jew God” was scrawled across the brick wall along with a drawing of a face labelled “Jewsus.”

That was the fourth time the church was targeted. On April 9, surveillance cameras caught a young man breaking into the church, ripping pages of the Sacramentary book on the altar and throwing them at the tabernacle, and stealing one of the church’s amplifier speakers. On May 17, a drawing of a hand gesturing with the middle finger was found spray painted on the front steps of the church. And on May 25, graffiti was sprayed on the school walls.

On June 3, the Islamic State kidnapped 86 Eritrean refugees in Libya, including 12 women and children. "IS militants asked everyone who is Muslim or not and everybody started saying they are Muslims. But you have to know the Koran, and they didn't," said a human rights activist, citing eyewitnesses who managed to escape. Nael Goitom, a 16-year-old Eritrean migrant who earlier escaped IS captivity said that jihadis forced him to watch the beheading and shooting of Eritrean and Ethiopian Christians.

Turkish authorities recently shut down Christian schools belonging to the Association of Churches of Jerusalem. Schools in several districts of the southeastern city of Gaziantep, where many refugees from Syria had fled, and in three other regions, were closed. Although providing much needed humanitarian relief, the Christian schools were found giving Bible and other Christian literature to their refugee students, many of whom come from Muslim backgrounds.

Al Azhar—arguably the Islamic world’s most prestigious Islamic university—continues to incite Egypt’s Muslims against Christians. Most recently the university was exposed distributing a free booklet dedicated to discrediting Christianity, shock full of direct attacks on Christianity in general and the nation’s Coptic Christians in particular.

Christianity is referred to as a “failed religion,” while Islam is hailed as the true and superior religion.

Because the “seeds of weakness” are inherent in Christianity and the Bible, says the booklet, Islam was easily able to supplant it in the Middle East.

Yet another Christian cemetery in post “Arab Spring” Libya was recently desecrated by Muslim militants. Described by witnesses as “Salafi” Muslims, the grave vandals destroyed crosses and tombstones, and dug up graves in the old Christian section of Tripoli in the early morning hours of June 3. Security forces charged with protecting the region did nothing to stop or arrest the desecraters.

Iran’s revolutionary court sentenced 18 Christian converts on charges that include evangelism, propaganda against the regime, and creating house churches to practice their faith. The sentences totaled almost 24 years (the lack of transparency in Iran’s tightly controlled judicial system does not allow for a breakdown of individual sentences). The defendants were also barred from organizing home church meetings and given a two-year ban from leaving Iran.

The Christians, many of whom were arrested in 2013, were sentenced in accordance with Article 500 of the Islamic Penal Code, which states that “Anyone who engages in any type of propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran or in support of opposition groups and associations, shall be sentenced to three months to one year of imprisonment.”

According to a 2015 U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom report, “Over the past year, there were numerous incidents of Iranian authorities raiding church services, threatening church members, and arresting and imprisoning worshipers and church leaders, particularly Evangelical Christian converts…. Since 2010, authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained more than 500 Christians throughout the country.”

Christians make for less than one percent of Iran’s Shia Muslim majority population.

“The Iranian regime’s systematic persecution of Christians, as well as Baha’is, Sunni Muslims, dissenting Shi’a Muslims, and other religious minorities, is getting worse not better," said U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in a statement. "This is a direct consequence of President Obama’s decision to de-link demands for improvements in religious freedom and human rights in Iran from the nuclear negotiations.”