I HAVE had some truly shocking “hate” emails involving some pretty ripe language in the last week.

This follows an address I gave to the parliamentary group on freedom of religion. I chose to make some personal reflections on the Middle East before going on to answer on behalf of the Government for our policy of delivering relief to refugees in Syria and Iraq.

I said that it was a matter of great regret that so many of the ancient Christian churches of the region were now being driven out, having survived there for two millennia – such as the Orthodox, the Coptic, Chaldean, Maronite, Armenian and the Assyrian Churches.

Nevertheless I rejected the argument that is increasingly put to me by a vocal minority of Christians, namely that Islam is intrinsically intolerant.

To accept this argument is to agree with the brutal and bloodthirsty Da’ish* that they are indeed the true expression of Islam and that a billion peace-loving Muslims are the slackers, neglecting their religious duty of killing us Kafirs and, therefore, equally deserving of death. This is, of course, monstrous nonsense.

It ignores the overwhelming majority of Muslims throughout history, in favour of the tiny minority of fanatics and psychopaths. I pointed out that Christendom has had its own share of blood-curdling violence and I gave a few choice examples, like the beheading of 10,000 men, women and children on the Temple Mount when the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099.

I said that this gruesome deed was no more representative of Christianity than Da’ish’s murders are of Islam.

This provoked a heated exchange with a section of the audience who adhere to the belief that it really is all Muslims’ fault and that their religion is indeed inherently violent. Some of this got written up in the Times and sparked hate emails from internet trolls.

The “official” and ministerial part of my presentation to the group got no coverage at all. I pointed out that the Syrian conflict had resulted in more than three million refugees in the surrounding countries and millions more displaced people within Syria.

This has given rise to UK’s largest ever commitment to a humanitarian emergency: we have committed £700 million to the crisis. I went into some detail about the nature of our relief programme.

The questions from the audience focussed on two specific areas. They wanted a commitment to resettle a few thousand refugees in the UK.

I do not believe that this will be effective use of our resources. The problem is in the millions – by spending our money in the region we are bringing relief to hundreds of thousands. Resettling a few here would not begin to address the scale of the problem.

* I use the Arabic nomenclature for ISIL, Da’ish, because they hate it and, for that reason, all our allies in the region use it. What we should never do, however, is follow the BBC by calling it “Islamic State”. It is neither a state, nor is it Islamic. Also, I believe that the fight against Da’ish must be a Muslim-led fight, because Muslims are its principal victims.