Anti-Christian as well as anti-American?

I was thinking about the underpants bomber and his choice of targeting the US on Christmas day. This struck me as having an anti-Christian message, in addition to the obvious anti-Americanism. It makes me wonder if there is anti-Christian, as distinct from anti-American, rhetoric in al-Qaeda and Islamic messages. If so, what are the implications for Christian and other religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries? Should we expect an up-tick in anti-Christian violence to come? For example, in Egypt, where 10% of the population are Coptic Christians, 6 Copts were killed on Coptic Christmas Eve in early January. I wonder if there's a study or a watch group that counts episodes of religious violence. Does anyone know?

So, I've looked it up and found that someone has beat me to the punch on writing about this, but only by a few days.

Here's an excerpt from an article that appeared in The Guardian just 5 days ago:

Violence against Christians as representatives of the "crusader west" is also an aspect of what French author Gilles Kepel has described as the far bigger civil war, or fitna, raging within the Islamic world itself.

Yet hostility also arises, in a fundamental sense, from Muslim perceptions of western aggression against Islam, be it the war in Afghanistan, domineering western economic and cultural behaviour, attempts to ban veils, offensive cartoon caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, airline and immigration profiling, or systemic, unchecked and arguably worsening discrimination and harassment of Muslim minorities living in western nations.

To have a chance of overcoming this widening gulf, the west may have to put its own house in order first. One proposed path is wider adoption of Karen Armstrong's new Charter for Compassion, a "spiritual document for the world", whose guiding idea is that while almost every religion has a history of intolerance, all have traditions of compassion that rise above hatred.

For faithful believers of all descriptions, the charter offers a golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."