Christians are fleeing Lebanon to escape political and economic crises and signs that radical Islam is on the rise in the country.

In a poll to be published next month which was exclusively leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, nearly half of all Maronites, the largest Christian denomination in the country, said they were considering emigrating. Of these, more than 100,000 have submitted visa applications to foreign embassies. Their exodus could have a devastating effect on the country, robbing it of an influential minority which has acted as an important counter-balance to the forces of Islamic extremism.

About 60,000 Christians have already left since last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. Many who remain fear that a violent showdown between rival Sunni and Shia factions is looming...

...Christine, another Christian woman, said that all of her family's younger generation had left the country, adding that Tripoli had become increasingly Islamised in recent years. There is a rising number of veiled women and religiously bearded men on the streets - although she blamed economic and political instability for much of the emigration. Christians...

..."Lebanon has always been a bastion of religious tolerance, but now it is moving towards the model of Islamisation seen in Iraq and Egypt," said Fr Samir Samir, a Jesuit teacher of Islamic studies at Beirut's Université Saint-Joseph...

Yahya Yousef Mousa is one of the several hundred Jews still living in Yemen. His grandparents refused to join the mass evacuation to Israel that followed anti-Jewish riots in 1948. Instead, they opted to continue a traditional life that their ancestors had peacefully pursued in Yemen for generations.

But, in January, that peace was shattered when Mr. Mousa was confronted by masked gunmen from a Shiite sect that accused him of spreading vice and corruption. He and his neighbors were told to leave their homes in the northern province of Saada or lose their lives...

"This morning my husband and I had an argument. Mahmud, my brother, intervened. I told him to stay out of it. 'What will you do if I get a divorce?' He told me my day is near, and I will die. He also said that my day, and that of Hamda, and of Y. and of N. was near. I feel that my life is in danger, along with Y. and N. (from testimony of B., a daughter of the Abu-Ghanem family). Eight women in the Abu-Ghanem family have been murdered in Ramle in the past six years in "family honor" cases. B. was the first to break the silence, telling police what she had heard from her cousin Y. about what happened last January at the time of the murder of 19-year-old Hamda Abu-Ganam...