A study conducted by the British think tank Civitas warns that Christians face great hostility across the world, especially in the Middle East, where Christianity is “close to extinction,” the Telegraph reported.

According to the study, Christians face the greatest persecution in Muslim majority countries, quoting estimates that between a half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left the region or have been killed in the past century.

“There is now a serious risk that Christianity will disappear from its biblical heartlands,” the report said.

The greatest threat to Christians in the Middle East is from radical Islam, Civitas said, but Western countries are afraid to confront oppression in Muslim countries out of fears that the criticism would be seen as “racism.”

“Exposing and combating the problem ought in my view to be political priorities across large areas of the world. That this is not the case tells us much about a questionable hierarchy of victim-hood,” says the report’s author, Rupert Shortt, a journalist and visiting fellow of Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford.