CANON Michael Ainsworth, a priest and colleague of mine just a couple of miles from my rectory in the City of London, was recently attacked in his churchyard by three Asian youths.

Fr Michael suffered two black eyes, cuts and bruises - so the attack was significant, not just a bit of horseplay. He was taken into hospital and his wife Janina, also a priest, stood in for him at the Palm Sunday service. Janina said: "It's obvious that the attack on Fr Michael does contain a religious element." It certainly is obvious: Michael's attackers shouted: "You f****** priest!"

as they beat him up This is the second time that Fr Michael's church has been attacked. After the Good Friday service last year, louts threw bricks through the church windows. A parishioner, Susan Crocker, said: "It's not out of the blue, they broke the glass last Easter - it's a recurrent problem." Another church member, Toni Davey, said: "To be honest something like this was going to happen sooner or later - it is the area and the times we are living in. There is tension in the area with the Muslims."

I find this disturbing for more reasons than one.

First, it's clear that the yobs who attacked Michael were Muslims. To their credit, the local Muslim leaders have tacitly admitted this by publicly deploring the crime. So why were the police, and much of the media, so vague as to call these yobs "Asians"? If I went into a fish and chip shop and beat up the owner, you can be sure the police and the papers wouldn't describe me as a "European".

Of course, we know the reason for official evasiveness in the cases of violence by Muslims: it is allegedly all in the interests of racial harmony and community relations. Actually, it's beating up priests - not reporting the crime fully - which damages community relations.

There is never any official hesitation in condemning attacks by white yobs on blacks or "Asians". This is quite right. Whenever there is violence against a person, the incident should be reported fully and fairly, regardless of the race and colour of the perpetrators and the victim.

But, have you noticed yet, there is a worldwide policy of appeasing religious persecution - but only when the persecution is directed against Christians. With due sympathy for Fr Michael, his case is trivial in the general run of things. On every continent Christians are being persecuted by Muslim fanatics. In Pakistan, churches are burned down almost every day. In Sudan, Somalia and the northern parts of Nigeria, Christians risk death for their faith.

In Saudi Arabia there are no churches - because the Christian faith is officially declared illegal there. If I walked down the main street in Riyadh wearing my clerical collar and priest's pectoral Cross, I would be arrested by the religious police and thrown into jail. But in Britain Muslims have complete freedom of religious expression and are even allowed to build towering mosques in prominent locations - such as Regent's Park.

There is so much violence worldwide perpetrated against Christians in the name of Islam.

Yet I, as a Christian priest, am not supposed to notice it. I am expected to keep my mouth shut and certainly not to write about it in a daily newspaper.

Where are the official complaints from the Archbishops, the rest of our failed and spineless hierarchy and the General Synod? Recall the spirit of appeasement from the 1930s. It was disastrous then and it will lead to a much greater disaster today.

■ Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.

9:49am Tuesday 25th March 2008

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