A/HRC/9/12 page 13 The theory of the clash of civilisations and religions, representing the ideological formulation of this radical difference, developed mainly by cold war theoreticians, postulates the inevitable conflict between the Christian West and the Arab Muslim world. Finally, opposition to the process of social multiculturalization resulting essentially from migratory trends, is reflected in the construction of identities that, among other things, reduce the European identity to Christianity and exclude Islam. Thus the identification of Christianity with the West, one of the sources of Christianophobia, is as much the product of ideologues and even religious figures in the Western Christian world as of religious or political groups hostile to Christianity. 34. The Special Rapporteur has also highlighted the negative role played in the development of Christianophobia by the aggressive proselytism of certain evangelical groups, particularly from North America, which have produced strong reactions of hostility and opposition to Christianity in South America, Africa and Asia. In his previous report on the defamation of religions (A/HRC/6/6), the Special Rapporteur referred to examples in India where the distribution of literature against Hinduism by evangelical groups calling for the destruction of Hindu religious symbols has revived resistance to Christianity going back to the colonial era. This opposition is gradually developing into open and virulent hostility to the mass conversion to Christianity of Untouchables wishing to flee the burdens of age-old discriminatory practices with their roots in Hinduism. In South America, and particularly Brazil, the demonization by certain evangelical groups of Afro-Brazilian religions, such as Candomblé, have produced distrust and hostility towards Christianity in general. 35. In Europe, Christianophobia, like Islamophobia, is linked to a powerful cultural current of dogmatic secularism that nurtures a suspicion of religion justified with reference to the historic conquest of the separation of Church and State. This strong cultural and ideological trend, the radical and influential expression of Nietzsche’s proclaimed “death of God”, has encouraged the emergence in intellectual and media circles of an anti-religious culture and has favoured a growing intolerance towards any kind of religious practice, expression or symbol. The decline of religious practice and church attendance and the crisis of priestly vocations are illustrations of this phenomenon. This intolerance is even reflected in the denial of the citizen’s democratic right to express his or her convictions and spiritual or religious values in pronouncements on political questions or major social issues and crises. Christianophobia is thus at root the expression of an imbalance between the legitimate defence of secularism and respect for freedom of religion. D. Other forms of religious discrimination 36. The Special Rapporteur wishes once again, expanding on his previous report on the defamation of religions (A/HRC/6/6), to draw the Council’s attention to two important dimensions of religious discrimination and defamation: intra-religious discrimination and defamation, and discrimination and defamation with respect to the spiritual and syncretistic traditions, sects, religious minorities and new religious movements. 37. The intra-religious dimension is one of the most pervasive and historically most violent and tenacious manifestations of religious discrimination and defamation. All the religions and spiritual traditions, in particular the religions of the Book, have experienced theological differences and internal political divisions giving rise to violent conflicts and sustained strategies of reciprocal denigration, demonization and self-justification. Christianity and Islam, from the Inquisition to the fatwa, have been the theatre of conflicts whose violence, scope and persistence