Frauke Petry, the controversy-courting leader of the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party has lashed out at German priests who seem more interested in Islam than the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

Calling the German church “dishonest”, Frauke Petry spoke out in a wide-ranging interview with German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung, touching on a range of topics from the mendacity of church compassion towards refugees, to the criticism being meted out to her party by the German establishment and her increasingly strong position in the polls, and to the Europe migrant crisis.

Dr. Petry and her party have recently been called extremist by German Catholic Cardinal Reinhard Marx, and the German church refuses to associate with the party, something she rejects as “not good style” for the church. Responding to the suggestion that the church is in the right, morally, by helping all those in need Dr. Petry asserted this compassion was imbalanced. She said:

“I think this is an illusion. If the church leaders would really deal with the consequences of the movement of refugees, then they would hear the cries of their Christian brothers in the Middle East. We see in many Muslim countries that have Christians present, [life] is very difficult. There are persecutions in many places”.

Church leaders in Germany abandoning their Christian brothers, she said, remarking that while they were being persecuted for their faith: “some officials of the German churches speak out more for Muslims than their own co-religionists. This is a clear imbalance”.

Not only were these Cardinals and Bishops failing to look out for Christians in the Middle East and Africa, said Dr. Petry, but they were also failing Christians in Europe. Speaking of the discrimination experienced by Christians in Europe from Muslims, she said: “I know of Christian refugees who come into the migrant centres in Germany and don’t feel safe there. They hoped to escape such threats, but they find them in their new homes”.

Dr. Petry said while compassion was a natural human attitude for individuals and one to be welcomed, she said it was not an appropriate government policy, which in any case had no hope to replace individual kindness. “More and more countries in Europe have recognised this”, she said, but it was not presently the case in Germany.

Speaking of the state of debate in Germany over the migrant crisis, Dr. Petry said the discussion was the wrong way around, with no separation between policy on migration, and policy on refugees. She said “the distinction is necessary”.

While German clergy may be ignoring the plight of Christians in the Middle East, others in Europe are alive to their plight. Breitbart London reported on the remarks of the Anglican church’s Archbishop of Canterbury who laid out the seriousness of the problem when he said: “Christians face elimination in the very region in which Christian faith began”, and that the Islamic State were bringing “apocalypse” to the region.