The absolute horror at the atrocities that Christians and other religious minorities are suffering in almost all the Muslim majority countries of the Middle East cannot be allowed to prevail over the sober observance of the Christian principle of “hate the sin but love the sinner”.

This is never easy and this time around it is harder still.

The images of unspeakable cruelty reserved by Allah-worshipping warriors for what they see as illegitimate religious minorities and the barbaric brutality served on American journalist James Foley indeed make it very hard not merge the sin with the sinner.

They make it harder still not to generalise and brand all Muslims with this cruelty. But so many Muslims share the horror that we feel.

Writing in Evangelii Gaudium earlier this year, Pope Francis warns against this peril. “Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations.”

It is a pity that the “true followers of Islam”, however, seem so absent in the defence of their religion’s dignity.

The insipid and customary avowals of some Muslim leaders that the terrorists are “not true Muslims,” are “enemies of Islam” which is “a religion of peace” do not ring true.

Indeed, the impression is that the persecution of the Christians, the Yezidis and others, including perceived Muslim heretics, is disliked more because it is giving a bad name to the religion than for the loathsome acts that are being committed.

Where is the outrage for the crimes being attributed to Allah’s will?

Where are the demonstrations by Muslims living in the West in support of the Christians being raped and killed, deprived of their houses, livelihoods and places of worship?

Where is the Muslim world’s indignation for the affliction at their co-religionists’ hands not for something that the Yezidis and the Christians have done but for what they are?

It is not insignificant that the usually restrained Holy See has been calling on Muslim religious leaders to condemn “the execrable practice of beheading, crucifixion and hanging corpses in public places” and a host of other crimes being committed by their co-religionists.

The Catholic Church will continue to serve the deprived of the world irrespective of their religious adherences

Nevertheless, the Catholic Church will not be deterred in her distinction between sinner and sin and in her mission. It will continue to serve the deprived of the world irrespective of their religious adherences.

Our countries, formed within the Christian faith, will continue to support those fleeing war and misery and help them settle in our communities.

As Catholics we will continue to seek reconciliation with Muslims, rejoice in shared values and search for the truth on the ground of reason – as Pope Benedict had so impressively explained in 2006 at the University of Regensburg.

We shall continue to do all this but we cannot remain eternally silent when the property, the rights, the life and the human dignity of Christians continue to be denied – lately so mercilessly.

Nor may the Muslims remain indifferent. On what blasphemous grounds does one “in the name of Allah” rob the life of a human being in a manner that evokes the ritual slaughter of animals?

The time has come to speak up, not loudly, but rationally, clearly and consistently. On the basis of reason and real – not wishful – fact.

There is now a need for a theological reassessment of the relationship between Christianity and Islam. We must dig deeply in the history of Christianity, both western and eastern, and we must address with retrospect the texts of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Not only the documents that speak explicitly about the Muslims (the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium and the declaration Nostra aetate) but also the others dealing with the Church in the modern world, human dignity and religious freedom.

On our side there is also the need for a clarification of terms, concepts and narrative. In the Islamic concept of society, for instance, there is no – and there cannot be – a real separation between (what we call) Church and State. Where this separation is attempted, the Koran will be offended.

In a country that seeks to be Islamic there cannot be real equality between men and women, husband and wife, Muslim and non-Muslim, and there is no place as a matter of principle for secular law or human rights as we understand them.

Muslims, by the very fact of being Muslims, are engaged in the search for the ummah, the establishment of “the worldwide Islamic family of man” which entails the substitution of a non-Muslim with a Muslim society.

No objection to this. Just as Christians have every right to seek a society modelled on the Gospel, Muslims have the perfect right to work for the expansion of Islam if they do it by peaceful means. The problem is that from its beginning Islam sanctioned violence as legitimate means.

There is also the need to ask where the post-Vatican II decades of Islamo-Christian dialogue have brought us. We must ask whether to date the Muslim participants in the hundreds of dialogue sessions were more than talking heads who spoke for none other than themselves.

We must ask whether the numerous statements that have been drawn up by Christians and Muslims have in fact resulted in more than occupied shelf space.

I believe that we must seek concrete objectives.

This seems to be the view of Pope Francis who has entreated “those countries (who have Muslim majority populations) to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practise their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in Western countries!”

This and other basic rights should be the objective of dialogues and not boardroom discussions and verbose statements.

Returning to the atrocities and injustice that Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities have lately been and are still suffering, I firmly believe that these happenings should not be the sole criterion for the evaluation of Islam as such.

Nor should they be an obstacle to the furtherance of Christian-Muslim friendship.

They should rather be seen as a challenge.

It is a challenge that Christians and Muslims should take up together in order to make sure that religion is never used as a force for evil.

That Christianity is not a force for evil has thankfully been shown once again by Foley’s mother. No words of vengeance from her or her Catholic family. For them now the priority is the safety of the other hostages.

And prayer. Not only for the repose of their beloved son and brother but also “for those who have perpetrated this kind of evil.” Here is, after all, what Christianity is about.

Mgr Joseph Farrugia teaches theology at the University of Malta and the Gozo Seminary. He is author of The Church and the Muslims.