The nation of Hungary recently did something as unprecedented as it is commonsensical and humanitarian: it “has become the first government to open an office specifically to address the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Europe.”

Zoltan Balog, Hungary’s Minister for Human Resources, explained:

Today, Christianity has become the most persecuted religion, where out of five people killed [for] religious reasons, four of them are Christians.

In 81 countries around the world, Christians are persecuted, and 200 million Christians live in areas where they are discriminated against. Millions of Christian lives are threatened by followers of radical religious ideologies.

“Followers of radical religious ideologies” is of course code for Muslims -- they who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of Christian persecution in the world.

This move comes “after Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Victor Orban, drew criticism in the EU by saying Europe should focus on helping Christians before helping millions of Muslims coming into Europe.”

Orban explained: “If we really want to help, we should help where the real problem is… We should first help the Christian people before Islamic people.”

But do Western governments “really want to help” those suffering true persecution? For if they did, not only would taking in “Christian people before Islamic people” be the most humane thing to do; it would also benefit Western nations as well.

Consider some facts:

Unlike Muslims, Christian minorities are being singled out and persecuted simply because of their despised religious identity. From a humanitarian point of view, then -- and humanitarianism is the reason being cited for accepting millions of refugees -- Christian refugees should receive greater priority over Muslim migrants. Even before the Islamic State was formed, Christians were and continue to be targeted by Muslims -- Muslim individuals, Muslim mobs, Muslim regimes, and Muslim terrorists, from Muslim countries of all races (Arab, African, Asian) -- and for the same reason: they are infidel number one. (See Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians for hundreds of anecdotes before the rise of ISIS as well as the Muslim doctrines that create such hate and contempt for Christians.)

Conversely, Muslim refugees -- as opposed to the many ISIS and other jihadi sympathizers posing as “refugees” -- are not fleeing religious persecution (most Muslim migrants are, like ISIS, Sunnis), but chaos created by the violent and supremacist teachings of their own religion. Hence why when large numbers of Muslims enter Western nations -- in Germany, Sweden, France, the UK -- tension, crimes, rapes, and terrorism soar.  

And hence why Hungarian minister Balog also said: “Our interest not only lies in the Middle East but in forms of discrimination and persecution of Christians all over the world. It is therefore to be expected that we will keep a vigilant eye on the more subtle forms of persecutions within European borders.”

Indeed, what more is needed than the fact that so-called Muslim “refugees” are throwing Christians overboard during their boat voyages across the Mediterranean to Europe? Or that Muslim majority refugee centers in Europe are essentially microcosms of Muslim majority nations: there, Christian minorities continue to be persecuted.

Most recently, a report found that 88% of the 231 Christian refugees interviewed in Germany have suffered religiously motivated persecution in the form of insults, death threats, and sexual assaults. Some were pressured to convert to Islam. “I really didn’t know that after coming to Germany I would be harassed because of my faith in the very same way as back in Iran,” one Christian refugee said. “These are not isolated cases. I don’t know of any refugee shelter from Garmisch to Hamburg where we have not found such cases,” said a German authority.

Is persecuting religious minorities the behavior of people who are in need of a sympathetic welcome by Europeans and Americans? Or is this behavior yet another reminder that it is non-Muslims from the Middle East who are truly in need of sanctuary?

Western nations should further accept Christian refugees because Western foreign policies are directly responsible for exacerbating their persecution. Christians did not flee from Bashar Assad’s Syria, or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Their systematic persecution -- to the point of genocide -- began only after the U.S. and other European nations interfered in those nations under the pretext of “democracy.” All they did is unleash the jihadi forces that the dictators had long kept suppressed. Now the Islamic State is deeply embedded in all three nations, enslaving, raping, and slaughtering countless Christian “infidels” and other minorities.

Surely if the West is responsible for unleashing the full-blown jihad on Christians, the least it can do is put Christians on the top of its refugee list -- that is, if it “really cares” about helping? In fact, it’s the opposite: report after report has shown that in Western nations persecuted Christians are “at the bottom of the heap” of refugees to be granted asylum. Despite the U.S. government’s acknowledgement that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians in Syria, the Obama administration has taken in 5,435 Muslims, but only 28 Christians -- even though Christians are approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population; in other words, to be on the same ratio with Muslims, at least 500 Christians should have been granted asylum, not 28.

There are even some benefits in taking in Mideast Christians instead of Muslims. Christians are easily assimilated in Western countries, due to the shared Christian heritage. Muslims follow a completely different blueprint, Islamic law, or Sharia -- which condemns and calls for constant war (jihad) against all non-Muslims, and advocates any number of distinctly anti-Western practices (female subjugation and sex slavery, death for blasphemers and apostates, etc.). Hence it’s no surprise that many Muslim asylum seekers are anti-Western at heart -- or, as the German police union chief recently said, Muslim migrants “despise our country and laugh at our justice.”

Mideast Christians also bring trustworthy language and cultural skills that are beneficial to the West. They understand the Middle Eastern -- including Islamic -- mindset and can help the West understand it. Moreover, unlike Muslims, Christians have no “conflicting loyalty” issues: Islamic law forbids Muslims from befriending or aiding “infidels” against fellow Muslims (click here to see some of the treachery this leads to in the U.S. and here to see the treachery Christians have suffered from their longtime Muslim neighbors and “friends”). No such threat exists among Mideast Christians. They too render unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

All the above reasons -- from those that offer humanitarian relief to the true victims of persecution, to those that offer safety and even benefits to the West -- are unassailable in their logic. Hungary seems to understand all this.

But can such common sense, reason, true altruism, and even self-interest ever prevail among the West’s ruling elite -- that is, assuming their motives in accepting millions of Muslims are sincere to start with?

Raymond Ibrahim, author of The Al Qaeda Reader and Crucified Again, is a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum.