An unspoken rule of many barbershops and hair salons is that two topics are never to be discussed: religion and politics.

Timothy Samuel Shah, Associate Director and Scholar-in-Residence at the Religious Freedom Project, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University, recently penned an opinion piece about persecuted Christians around the world that appeared on FoxNews.com. The piece explores five "myths" about Christian persecution, and reasons why it is largely ignored in the West, especially by the media.

Different regions of the world have different histories and also different traditions about freedom, especially freedom of religion. Some areas of the world have never known freedom, or very little of it, so society’s disapproval of people who turn to Christ or witness for Christ is somewhat expected. The idea of “tolerance” is not in their thinking. In Western thought, however, the idea of tolerance is well known, and it sometimes evokes emotion in Christians who believe it indicates turning one’s back on biblical truth.

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from a post on Ravi Zacharias International Ministries' web site, reposted here with permission. The post was written by Jill Carattini, managing editor of A Slice of Infinity for RZIM. You can read the full post here.

Muslims often come to Christ in the context of friendship, and friendship can begin with a simple greeting: