Religious persecution

[8] R.I. Moore says that persecution during the Middle Ages "provides a striking illustration of the classic deviance theory, [which is based on identity formation], as it was propounded by the father of sociology, Émile Durkheim".

The 1584 Parliament of England, declared in "An Act against Jesuits, seminary priests, and such other like disobedient persons" that the purpose of all Catholic missionaries who had come to Britain was "to stir up and move sedition, rebellion and open hostility".

[34] Consequently, even strictly apolitical priests like Saint John Ogilvie, Dermot O'Hurley, and Robert Southwell were subjected to torture and execution, as were members of the laity like Sts.

While Mary's sister Queen Elizabeth I allegedly, "acted out of fear for the security of her realm",[36] she sought to coerce both Catholics and Protestants to embrace a national church that was completely subservient to the state.

Over the centuries that followed, English governments continued to fear and prosecute both real and imaginary conspiracies like the Popish Plot, an alleged plan to assassinate King Charles II and massacre the Protestants of the British Isles.

By the eighth century, Christianity had attained a clear ascendancy across Europe and neighboring regions, and a period of consolidation began which was marked by the pursuit of heretics, heathens, Jews, Muslims, and various other religious groups.

In England, there had been several Acts of Uniformity; in continental Europe, the Latin phrase "cuius regio, eius religio" had been coined in the 16th century and applied as a fundament for the Peace of Augsburg (1555).

[42] It was Locke who, in his Letter Concerning Toleration, defined the state in purely secular terms:[43] "The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests.

According to an inscription of Khan Mengual-Temir, Metropolitan Kiril was granted the right to heavily punish with death for blasphemy against the Orthodox Church or breach of ecclesiastical privileges.

[50]Although his book was written before the September 11 attacks, John Coffey explicitly compares Islamophobia in the contemporary Western world to the English Whig Party's paranoia about the fictitious Popish Plot.

[51] Mehdi Ghezali and Murat Kurnaz were among the Muslims who were imprisoned in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, but they were not found to have any connections to terrorism, because they had previously traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to pursue their religious interests.

The report contains data which the United States collects from U.S. embassies around the world in collaboration with the Office of International Religious Freedom and other relevant U.S. government and non-governmental institutions.

Such jihads caused the Dogon to abandon their original villages and move up to the cliffs of Bandiagara in search of a place where they could defend themselves more efficiently and escape persecution—which they often did by building their dwellings in little nooks and crannies.

In the wake of the Ogossagou massacre, the President of Mali, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and his government ordered the dissolution of Dan Na Ambassagou—whom they hold partly responsible for the attacks.

The religious and ethnic persecution of the Serer people dates back to the 11th century, when King War Jabi usurped the throne of Tekrur (a part of present-day Senegal) in 1030, and in 1035, he introduced Sharia law and forced his subjects to submit to Islam.

[82][83][84] The Soviet Union attempted to suppress religion over wide areas of its influence, including places like central Asia,[85] and the post-World War II Eastern bloc.

The letter was brought to the attention of the international community by Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on freedom of religion or belief, in a 20 March 2006 press release [2].

The 2018 World Watch List has the following countries as its top ten: North Korea, and Eritrea, whose Christian and Muslim religions are controlled by the state, and Afghanistan, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, India and Iran, which are all predominantly non-Christian.

[131][55][132] Gina Zurlo, the CSGC's assistant director, explained that two-thirds of the 90,000 died in tribal conflicts, and nearly half were victims of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

[a] Copts have cited instances of persecution throughout their history and Human Rights Watch has noted "growing religious intolerance" and sectarian violence against Coptic Christians in recent years, as well as a failure by the Egyptian government to effectively investigate properly and prosecute those responsible.

[180][181][182][183][184] Watch Tower Society literature of the period directed that Witnesses should "never seek a controversy" nor resist arrest, but also advised members not to co-operate with police officers or courts that ordered them to stop preaching, and to prefer jail rather than pay fines.

It is characterised by multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education, and a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as arbitrary arrests, forced labor, and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.

Militancy and sectarianism has been rising in Pakistan since the 1990s, and the religious minorities have "borne the brunt of the Islamist's ferocity" suffering "greater persecution than in any earlier decade", states Farahnaz Ispahani—a Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center.

An article in Time magazine dated 2 August 1971, stated "the Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Muslim military hatred.

[227] In early 1990, local Urdu newspapers Aftab and Al Safa called upon Kashmiris to wage jihad against India and ordered the expulsion of all Hindus choosing to remain in Kashmir.

In April the government executed 37 citizens ... 33 of the 37 were from the country's minority Shia community and had been convicted following what they stated were unfair trials for various alleged crimes, including protest-related offenses...

[291][292][293][294][295][296][297][298] In June 1984, during Operation Blue Star, Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian Army to attack the Golden Temple and eliminate any insurgents, as it had been occupied by Sikh separatists who were stockpiling weapons.

[302] The violence in Delhi was triggered by the assassination of Indira Gandhi, India's prime minister, on 31 October 1984, by two of her Sikh bodyguards in response to her actions authorising the military operation.

After the assassination following Operation Blue Star, many Indian National Congress workers including Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and Kamal Nath were accused of inciting and participating in riots targeting the Sikh population of the capital.

The Asian Age front-page story called the government's actions "the Mother of all Cover-ups"[307][308] There are allegations that the violence was led and often perpetrated by Indian National Congress activists and sympathisers during the riots.