The source of Christian persecution in Islamic countries is mainstream Muslim doctrine, not extremist or radical ideas, says the author of a new book.

In his book "Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians," Raymond Ibrahim reports on the suffering of Christians occurring in what he says is from "one end of the Islamic world to the other."

He is a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Middle East Forum. Ibrahim, who is widely published, has spoken at universities and in front of the U.S. Congress and has briefed government agencies in the United States.

In an interview with Bryan Fischer of American Family Radio, Ibrahim was asked why he used the term "Islam" instead of "radical Islam" in his title.

He told Fischer that the reason he did not use these terms is that the Sharia Law on which the persecution of Christians is based is not radical to those who follow Islam.

"If I follow it, if I am a Muslim, I am just following Islam," he said. "I am not following something that is warped or twisted."

Ibrahim said, for instance, that mainstream Sharia law prohibits the building of new churches or the fixing of old ones in Islamic lands.

He also noted that apostasy is punishable by death according to mainstream Muslim doctrines.

"And you see it happening all the time", he said. "That is why it is difficult to call it extremism or radicalism because it is the teaching; this is the mainstream, documented teaching."

In a recent article in Human Events, Ibrahim decried a recent "jihadi attack" on St. Mark's Cathedral in Egypt.

The Cairo church is a historic shrine to millions of believers around the world, not just to the Coptic Christians of Egypt, he said.

In his articles Ibrahim uses what is happening in Egypt to exemplify the attacks on Christians all over the Islamic world. He is the American son of Coptic Christians who immigrated to the United States.

Ibrahim also said that persecution based on Muslim teachings is a pattern repeated all over the Islamic world. He said that he sees the same forms of persecution in Islamic countries with differing cultures, races, politics and economic circumstances.

The pattern in these persecutions can be traced "right back to Islamic teaching," he said.

Fischer cited to Ibrahim the results of a Pew Research Forum poll published in American Thinker Magazine which revealed that there was broad support among people in Muslim countries for harsh punishments based on Sharia law.

Ibrahim noted that the Western media attempts to dismiss the kind of attitudes portrayed in the Pew results as fringe or extreme.

"That's just not reality," he said.

People in Islamic countries with a Muslim background who had not been practicing their faith are returning to it in record numbers, according to Ibrahim.

He told The Inquistr magazine that he wrote his new book to fill a vacuum left by the failure of the mainstream media and others, including the administration of President Barack Obama, to discuss the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries.

"If any other group but Christians were being attacked as they are in the Islamic world, their plight would make international headlines," he said.