title: Persecution of Christians

text: Throughout the period of the siege of Constantinople, the trapped worshippers of the city participated in the Divine Liturgy and the Prayer of the Hours at the Hagia Sophia and the church formed a safe-haven and a refuge for many of those who were unable to contribute to the city's defence, which comprised women, children, elderly, the sick and the wounded. Being trapped in the church, the many congregants and yet more refugees inside became spoils-of-war to be divided amongst the triumphant invaders. The building was desecrated and looted, with the helpless occupants who sought shelter within the church being enslaved. While most of the elderly and the infirm/wounded and sick were killed, and the remainder (mainly teenage males and young boys) were chained up and sold into slavery.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The women of Constantinople also suffered from rape at the hands of Ottoman forces. According to Barbaro, "all through the day the Turks made a great slaughter of Christians through the city". According to historian Philip Mansel, widespread persecution of the city's civilian inhabitants took place, resulting in thousands of murders and rapes, and 30,000 civilians being enslaved or forcibly deported. George Sphrantzes says that people of both genders were raped inside Hagia Sophia.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Since the time of the Austro-Turkish war (1683–1699), relations between Muslims and Christians who lived in the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire gradually deteriorated and this deterioration in interfaith relations occasionally resulted in calls for the expulsion or extermination of local Christian communities by some Muslim religious leaders. As a result of Ottoman oppression, the destruction of Churches and Monasteries, and violence against the non-Muslim civilian population, Serbian Christians and their church leaders, headed by Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III, sided with the Austrians in 1689 and again in 1737 under Serbian Patriarch Arsenije IV. In the following punitive campaigns, Ottoman forces conducted systematic atrocities against the Christian population in the Serbian regions, resulted in the Great Migrations of the Serbs.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Before the late 16th century, Albania's population remained overwhelmingly Christian, despite the fact that it was under Ottoman rule, unlike the populations of other regions of the Ottoman Empire, such as Bosnia, Bulgaria and Northern Greece, the mountainous Albania was a frequent site of revolts against Ottoman rule, often at an enormous human cost, such as the destruction of entire villages. In response, the Ottomans abandoned their usual policy of tolerating Christians in favor of a policy which was aimed at reducing the size of Albania's Christian population through Islamization, beginning in the restive Christian regions of Reka and Elbasan in 1570.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The pressures which resulted from this campaign included particularly harsh economic conditions which were imposed on Albania's Christian population; while earlier taxes on the Christians were around 45 "akçes" a year, by the middle of the 17th century the rate had been multiplied by 27 to 780 "akçes" a year. Albanian elders often opted to save their clans and villages from hunger and economic ruin by advocating village-wide and region-wide conversions to Islam, with many individuals frequently continuing to practice Christianity in private.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: A failed Catholic rebellion in 1596 and the Albanian population's support of Austro-Hungary during the Great Turkish War, and its support of the Venetians in the 1644 Venetian-Ottoman War as well as the Orlov Revolt were all factors which led to punitive measures in which outright force was accompanied by economic incentives depending on the region, and ended up forcing the conversion of large Christian populations to Islam in Albania. In the aftermath of the Great Turkish War, massive punitive measures were imposed on Kosovo's Catholic Albanian population and as a result of them, most members of it fled to Hungary and settled around Buda, where most of them died of disease and starvation.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: After the Orthodox Serbian population's subsequent flight from Kosovo, the pasha of Ipek (Peja/Pec) forced Albanian Catholic mountaineers to repopulate Kosovo by deporting them to Kosovo, and also forced them adopt Islam. In the 17th and 18th centuries, South Albania also saw numerous instances of violence which was directed against those who remained Christian by local newly converted Muslims, ultimately resulting in many more conversions out of fear as well as flight to faraway lands by the Christian population.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Religion in Albania was subordinated to the interests of Marxism during the rule of the country's communist party when all religions were suppressed. This policy was justified by the communist stance of state atheism from 1967 to 1991. The Agrarian Reform Law of August 1945 nationalized most of the property which belonged to religious institutions, including the estates of mosques, monasteries, religious orders, and dioceses. Many clergy and believers were tried and some of them were executed. All foreign Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns were expelled from Albania in 1946. The military seized Churches, cathedrals and mosques and converted them into basketball courts, movie theaters, dance halls, and the like; and members of the Clergy were stripped of their titles and imprisoned. Around 6,000 Albanians were disappeared and murdered by agents of the Communist government, and their bodies were never found or identified. Albanians continued to be imprisoned, tortured and killed for their religious practices well into 1991.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Religious communities or branches of them which had their headquarters outside the country, such as the Jesuit and Franciscan orders, were henceforth ordered to terminate their activities in Albania. Religious institutions were forbidden to have anything to do with the education of the young, because that activity had been made the exclusive province of the state. All religious communities were prohibited from owning real estate and they were also prohibited from operating philanthropic and welfare institutions and hospitals. Enver Hoxha's overarching goal was the eventual destruction of all organized religions in Albania, despite some variance in his approach to it.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Assyrians were subjected to another series of persecutions during the Simele massacre of 1933, with the death of approximately 3000 Assyrian civilians in the Kingdom of Iraq at the hands of the Royal Iraqi Army.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 1987, the last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians. They were tolerated under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, who even made one of them, Tariq Aziz his deputy. However, Saddam Hussein's government continued to persecute the Christians on an ethnic, cultural and racial basis, because the vast majority are Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic-speaking Ethnic Assyrians (aka Chaldo-Assyrians). The Assyro-Aramaic language and script was repressed, the giving of Hebraic/Aramaic Christian names or Akkadian/Assyro-Babylonian names was forbidden (for example Tariq Aziz's real name was Michael Youhanna ), and Saddam exploited religious differences between Assyrian denominations such as Chaldean Catholics, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Pentecostal Church and the Ancient Church of the East, in an attempt to divide them. Many Assyrians and Armenians were ethnically cleansed from their towns and villages during the al Anfal Campaign in 1988, despite the fact that this campaign was primarily directed against the Kurds.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Queen Ranavalona I (reigned 1828–1861) issued a royal edict prohibiting the practice of Christianity in Madagascar, expelled British missionaries from the island, and sought to stem the growth of conversion to Christianity within her realm. Far more, however, were punished in other ways: many were required to undergo the "tangena" ordeal, while others were condemned to hard labor or the confiscation of their land and property, and many of these consequently died. The tangena ordeal was commonly administered to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused person for any crime, including the practice of Christianity, and involved ingestion of the poison contained within the nut of the tangena tree ("Cerbera odollam"). Survivors were deemed innocent, while those who perished were assumed guilty.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 1838, it was estimated that as many as 100,000 people in Imerina died as a result of the "tangena" ordeal, constituting roughly 20% of the population. contributing to a strongly unfavorable view of Ranavalona's rule in historical accounts. Malagasy Christians would remember this period as "ny tany maizina", or "the time when the land was dark". Persecution of Christians intensified in 1840, 1849 and 1857; in 1849, deemed the worst of these years by British missionary to Madagascar W.E. Cummins (1878), 1,900 people were fined, jailed or otherwise punished in relation to their Christian faith, including 18 executions.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Hitler and the Nazis received some support from certain Christian fundamentalist communities, mainly due to their common cause against the anti-religious Communists, as well as their mutual Judeophobia and antisemitism. Once in power, the Nazis moved to consolidate their power over the German churches and bring them in line with Nazi ideals. Some historians say that Hitler had a general covert plan, which some of them say existed even before the Nazis' rise to power, to destroy Christianity within the Reich, which was to be accomplished through Nazi control and subversion of the churches and it would be completed after the war. The Third Reich founded its own version of Christianity which was called Positive Christianity, a Nazi version of Christianity which made major changes in the interpretation of the Bible by arguing that Jesus Christ was the son of God, but he was not a Jew, arguing that Jesus despised Jews and Judaism, and arguing that the Jews were the ones who were solely responsible for Jesus's death.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Outside mainstream Christianity, the Jehovah's Witnesses were targets of Nazi Persecution, for their refusal to swear allegiance to the Nazi government. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s, Jehovah's Witnesses refused to renounce their political neutrality and as a result, they were imprisoned in concentration camps. The Nazi government gave detained Jehovah's Witnesses the option of release if they signed a document which indicated their renunciation of their faith, their submission to state authority, and their support of the German military. Historian Hans Hesse said, "Some five thousand Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to concentration camps where they alone were 'voluntary prisoners', so termed because the moment they recanted their views, they could be freed. Some lost their lives in the camps, but few renounced their faith."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Nazi Dissolution of the Bruderhof was also carried out by the Nazi government because the Bruderhof refused to pledge allegiance to Hitler. In 1937 its property was confiscated and its members fled to England.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Relations between Muslims and Christians in the Ottoman Empire during the modern era were shaped in no small part by broader dynamics which were related to European colonial and neo-imperialist activity in the region, dynamics which frequently (though by no means always) generated tensions between the two communities. Too often, growing European influence in the region during the nineteenth century seemed to disproportionately benefit Christians, thus producing resentment on the part of many Muslims, likewise a suspicion that Christians were colluding with the European powers to weaken the Islamic world. Further exacerbating relations was the fact that Christians seemed to benefit disproportionately from efforts at reform (one aspect of which generally sought to elevate the political status of non-Muslims), likewise, the various Christian nationalist uprisings in the Empire's European territories, which often had the support of the European powers.Persecutions and forced migrations of Christian populations were induced by Ottoman forces during the 19th century in the European and Asian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The Massacres of Badr Khan were conducted by Kurdish and Ottoman forces against the Assyrian Christian population of the Ottoman Empire between 1843 and 1847, resulting in the slaughter of more than 10,000 indigenous Assyrian civilians of the Hakkari region, with many thousands more being sold into slavery.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 17 October 1850 the Muslim majority began rioting against the Uniate Catholics – a minority that lived in the communities of Judayda, in the city of Aleppo.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: During the Bulgarian Uprising (1876) against Ottoman rule, and the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), the persecution of the Bulgarian Christian population was conducted by Ottoman soldiers. The principal locations were Panagurishte, Perushtitza, and Bratzigovo. Over 15,000 non-combatant Bulgarian civilians were killed by the Ottoman army between 1876 and 1878, with the worst single instance being the Batak massacre.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: During the war, whole cities including the largest Bulgarian one (Stara Zagora) were destroyed and most of their inhabitants were killed, the rest being expelled or enslaved. The atrocities included impaling and grilling people alive. Similar attacks were undertaken by Ottoman troops against Serbian Christians during the Serbian-Turkish War (1876–1878).


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The abolition of jizya and emancipation of formerly dhimmi subjects was one of the most embittering stipulations the Ottoman Empire had to accept to end the Crimean War in 1856. Then, “for the first time since 1453, church bells were permitted to ring... in Constantinople,” writes M. J. Akbar. “Many Muslims declared it a day of mourning.” Indeed, because superior social standing was from the start one of the advantages of conversion to Islam, resentful Muslim mobs rioted and hounded Christians all over the empire. In 1860 up to 30,000 Christians were massacred in the Levant alone.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Between 1894 and 1896 a series of ethno-religiously motivated Anti-Christian pogroms known as the Hamidian massacres were conducted against the ancient Armenian and Assyrian Christian populations by the forces of the Ottoman Empire. The motives for these massacres were an attempt to reassert Pan-Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, resentment of the comparative wealth of the ancient indigenous Christian communities, and a fear that they would attempt to secede from the tottering Ottoman Empire. The massacres mainly took place in what is today southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria and northern Iraq. Assyrians and Armenians were massacred in Diyarbakir, Hasankeyef, Sivas and other parts of Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia, by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The death toll is estimated to have been as high as 325,000 people, with a further 546,000 Armenians and Assyrians made destitute by forced deportations of survivors from cities, and the destruction or theft of almost 2500 of their farmsteads towns and villages. Hundreds of churches and monasteries were also destroyed or forcibly converted into mosques. These attacks caused the death of over thousands of Assyrians and the forced "Ottomanisation" of the inhabitants of 245 villages. The Ottoman troops looted the remains of the Assyrian settlements and these were later stolen and occupied by south-east Anatolian tribes. Unarmed Assyrian women and children were raped, tortured and murdered. According to H. Aboona, the independence of the Assyrians was destroyed not directly by the Turks but by their neighbours under Ottoman auspices.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Adana massacre occurred in the Adana Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire in April 1909. A massacre of Armenian and Assyrian Christians in the city of Adana and its surrounds amidst the 31 March Incident led to a series of anti-Christian pogroms throughout the province. Reports estimated that the Adana Province massacres resulted in the death of as many as 30,000 Armenians and 1,500 Assyrians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Between 1915 and 1921 the Young Turks government of the collapsing Ottoman Empire persecuted Eastern Christian populations in Anatolia, Persia, Northern Mesopotamia and The Levant. The onslaught by the Ottoman army, which included Kurdish, Arab and Circassian irregulars resulted in an estimated 3.4 million deaths, divided between roughly 1.5 million Armenian Christians, 0.75 million Assyrian Christians, 0.90 million Greek Orthodox Christians and 0.25 million Maronite Christians (see Great Famine of Mount Lebanon); groups of Georgian Christians were also killed. The massive ethnoreligious cleansing expelled from the empire or killed the Armenians and the Bulgarians who had not converted to Islam, and it came to be known as the Armenian genocide, Assyrian genocide, Greek genocide. and Great Famine of Mount Lebanon. which accounted for the deaths of Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and Maronite Christians, and the deportation and destitution of many more. The Genocide led to the devastation of ancient indigenous Christian populations who had existed in the region for thousands of years.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi argue that the Armenian genocide and other contemporaneous persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire (Greek genocide, and Assyrian genocide) constitute an extermination campaign, or genocide, carried out by the Ottoman Empire against its Christian subjects.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the aftermath of the Sheikh Said rebellion, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East were subjected to harassment by Turkish authorities, on the grounds that some Assyrians allegedly collaborated with the rebelling Kurds. Consequently, mass deportations took place and Assyrian Patriarch Mar Ignatius Elias III was expelled from the Mor Hananyo Monastery which was turned into a Turkish barrack. The patriarchal seat was then temporarily transferred to Homs.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks undertook a massive program to remove the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church from the government, outlawed antisemitism in society, and promoted atheism. Tens of thousands of churches were destroyed or they were converted to buildings which were used for other purposes, and many members of the clergy were murdered, publicly executed and imprisoned for what the government termed "anti-government activities". An extensive educational and propaganda campaign was launched to convince people, especially children and youths, to abandon their religious beliefs. This persecution resulted in the intentional murder of 500,000 Orthodox followers by the government of the Soviet Union during the 20th century. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The state established atheism as the only scientific truth. Soviet authorities forbade the criticism of atheism and agnosticism until 1936 or of the state's anti-religious policies; such criticism could lead to forced retirement. Militant atheism became central to the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a high priority policy of all Soviet leaders. Christopher Marsh, a professor at the Baylor University writes that "Tracing the social nature of religion from Schleiermacher and Feurbach to Marx, Engles, and Lenin...the idea of religion as a social product evolved to the point of policies aimed at the forced conversion of believers to atheism."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Under the doctrine of state atheism in the Soviet Union, a "government-sponsored program of forced conversion to atheism" was conducted by the Communists. The Communist Party destroyed churches, mosques and temples, ridiculed, harassed, incarcerated and executed religious leaders, flooded the schools and media with anti-religious teachings, and it introduced a belief system called "scientific atheism", with its own rituals, promises and proselytizers. Many priests were killed and imprisoned; thousands of churches were closed. In 1925 the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the persecution. The League of Militant Atheists was also a "nominally independent organization established by the Communist Party to promote atheism".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. Actions towards particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed. It is estimated that 500,000 Russian Orthodox Christians were martyred in the gulags by the Soviet government, excluding the members of other Christian denominations who were also tortured or killed.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful worshippers. A very large segment of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested. The widespread persecution and internecine disputes within the church hierarchy lead to the seat of Patriarch of Moscow being vacant from 1925 to 1943.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church in order to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. By 1957, about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. But in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced about 12,000 churches to close. By 1985, fewer than 7,000 churches remained active.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the Soviet Union, in addition to the methodical closure and destruction of churches, the charitable and social work which was formerly done by ecclesiastical authorities was taken over by the state. As with all private property, Church owned property was confiscated and converted to public use by the state. The few places of worship which were left to the Church were legally viewed as state property which the government permitted the church to use. After the advent of state funded universal education, the Church was not permitted to carry on educational, instructional activity for children. For adults, only training for church-related occupations was allowed. With the exception of sermons which could be delivered during the celebration of the divine liturgy, it could not instruct the faithful nor could it evangelize the youth. Catechism classes, religious schools, study groups, Sunday schools and religious publications were all declared illegal and banned. This caused many religious tracts to be circulated as illegal literature or samizdat. Even after the death of Stalin in 1953, the persecution continued, and it did not end until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church has recognized a number of New Martyrs as saints, some of whom were executed during the Mass operations of the NKVD under directives like NKVD Order No. 00447.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Both before and after the October Revolution of 7 November 1917 (25 October Old Calendar), there was a movement within the Soviet Union which sought to unite all of the people of the world under Communist rule (see Communist International). This movement spread to the Eastern European bloc countries as well as the Balkan States. Since the populations of some of these Slavic countries tied their ethnic heritages to their ethnic churches, the people and their churches were both targeted for ethnic and political genocide by the Soviets and their form of State atheism. The Soviets' official religious stance was one of "religious freedom or tolerance", though the state established atheism as the only scientific truth (see also the Soviet or committee of the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Scientific and Political Knowledge or Znanie which was until 1947 called The League of the Militant Godless and various Intelligentsia groups). Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes resulted in imprisonment. Some of the more high-profile individuals who were executed include Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, priest and scientist Pavel Florensky.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to James M. Nelson a psychology professor at East Carolina University, the total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime may have been around 12 million, while Todd Johnson and Gina Zurlo of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary at Boston University estimate a figure of 15–20 million.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Second Spanish Republic, proclaimed in 1931, attempted to establish a regime with a separation between State and Church as it had happened in France (1905). When established, the Republic passed legislation which prevented the Church from conducting educational activities. A process of political polarisation had characterised the Spanish Second Republic, party divisions became increasingly embittered and questions of religious identity came to assume major political significance. The existence of different Church institutions was an illustration of the situation which resulted from the proclamation which denounced the 2nd Republic as an anti-Catholic, Masonic, Jewish, and Communist internationalist conspiracy which heralded a clash between God and atheism, chaos and harmony, Good and Evil. The Church's high-ranking officials like Isidro Goma, bishop of Tudela, reminded their Christian subjects of their obligation to vote "for the righteous", and their priests of their obligation to "educate the consciences." In the Asturian miners' strike of 1934, part of the Revolution of 1934, 34 Catholic priests were massacred and churches were systematically burned. Anticlerical opinion accused the Catholic priesthood and religious orders of hypocrisy: clerics were guilty of taking up arms against the people, of exploiting others for the sake of wealth, and of sexual immorality all while claiming the moral authority of peacefulness, poverty, and chastity.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Since the early stages of the Second Republic, far-right forces which were imbued with an ultra-Catholic spirit attempted to overthrow the Republic. Carlists, Africanistas, and Catholic theologians fostered an atmosphere of social and racial hatred in their speeches and writings. The Catholic Church endorsed the rebellion which was led by the fascist Francisco Franco, and Pope Pius XI expressed sympathy for the Nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War. The Catholic authorities described Franco's war as a "crusade" against the Second Republic, and later the Collective Letter of the Spanish Bishops, 1937 appeared, justifying Franco's attack on the Republic. A similar approach is attested in 1912, when the bishop of Almería (founder of the ) announced "a decisive battle that must be unleashed" between the "light" and "darkness". Though the official declaration of the "crusade" followed the Republican persecution of Catholic clerics, the Catholic Church was already predisposed towards Franco's position, because it was seen as the "perfect ally of fascism" while it opposed the anticlerical policies of the Second Republic. The 1936 anticlerical persecution has been seen as "final phase of a long war between clericalism and anticlericalism" and "fully consistent with a Spanish history of popular anticlericalism and anticlerical populism".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Stanley Payne suggested that the persecution of right-wingers and people who were associated with the Catholic church both before and at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War involved the murder of priests and other clergy, as well as thousands of lay people, by sections of nearly all leftist groups, while a killing spree was also unleashed across the Nationalist zone. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, and especially during the early months of the conflict, individual clergymen and entire religious communities were executed by leftists, some of whom were communists and anarchists. The death toll of the clergy alone included 13 bishops, 4,172 diocesan priests and seminarians, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns, reaching a total of 6,832 clerical victims. The main perpetrators of the Red Terror were members of the anarchist Federación Anarquista Ibérica, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, and the Trotskyist Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. These organizations distanced themselves from the violence, condemned those who were responsible for it or characterized the killings as mob reprisals for acts of violence which had been perpetrated by the clerics themselves, an explanation which was readily accepted by the public.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In addition to the murder of both the clergy and the faithful, the destruction of churches and the desecration of sacred sites and objects was also widespread. On the night of 19 July 1936 alone, some fifty churches were burned. In Barcelona, out of the 58 churches, only the cathedral was spared, and similar desecrations occurred almost everywhere in Republican Spain.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Two exceptions were Biscay and Gipuzkoa where the Christian Democratic Basque Nationalist Party, after some hesitation, supported the Republic and halted the persecution of Catholics in areas which were held by the Basque Government. All other Catholic churches which were located in the Republican zone were closed. The desecration was not limited to Catholic churches, because synagogues and Protestant churches were also pillaged and closed, but some small Protestant churches were spared. The rising Franco's regime would keep Protestant churches and synagogues closed, as he only permitted the Catholic Church.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Payne called the terror the "most extensive and violent persecution of Catholicism in Western History, in some way even more intense than that of the French Revolution."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The persecution drove Catholics to the side of the Nationalists, even more of them sided with the Nationalists than would have been expected, because they defended their religious interests and survival.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Roman Catholic priests who were killed during the Red Terror are considered "Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War", though the priests who were executed by the fascists are not counted among them. A group known as the "498 Spanish Martyrs" were beatified by the Roman Catholic Church's Pope Benedict XVI in 2007. The history of the Red Terror has been obscured by scholarly inattention and the "embarrassing partiality" of ecclesiastical historians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Some of the numerous non-fascists who were persecuted during Franco's White Terror were Protestants, because the fascists accused them of being associated with Freemasonry, and the persecution which they were subjected to during Franco's White Terror was much more intense than the persecution which they were subjected to during the Red Terror.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Latter Day Saints, (Mormons) have been persecuted since their founding in the 1830s. The persecution of the Mormons drove them from New York and Ohio to Missouri, where they continued to be subjected to violent attacks. In 1838, Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs declared that Mormons had made war on the state of Missouri, so they "must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state" At least 10,000 were expelled from the State. In the most violent altercation which occurred at that time, the Haun's Mill massacre, 17 Mormons were murdered by an anti-Mormon mob and 13 other Mormons were wounded. The Extermination Order which was signed by Governor Boggs was not formally invalidated until 25 June 1976, 137 years after being signed.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Mormons subsequently fled to Nauvoo, Illinois, where hostilities again escalated. In Carthage, Ill., where Joseph Smith was being held on the charge of treason, a mob stormed the jail and killed him. Smith's brother, Hyrum, was also killed. After a succession crisis, most united under Brigham Young, who organized an evacuation from the United States after the federal government refused to protect them. 70,000 Mormon pioneers crossed the Great Plains to settle in the Salt Lake Valley and surrounding areas. After the Mexican–American War, the area became the US territory of Utah. Over the next 63 years, several actions by the federal government were directed against Mormons in the Mormon Corridor, including the Utah War, the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, the Poland Act, "Reynolds v. United States", the Edmunds Act, the Edmunds–Tucker Act, and the Reed Smoot hearings.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1915 and launched in the 1920s, persecuted Catholics in both the United States and Canada. As stated in its official rhetoric which focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, the Klan was motivated by anti-Catholicism and American nativism. Its appeal was exclusively directed towards white Anglo-Saxon Protestants; it opposed Jews, blacks, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern and Eastern European immigrants such as Italians, Russians, and Lithuanians, many of whom were either Jewish or Catholic.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Across Eastern Europe following World War II, the parts of the Nazi Empire which were conquered by the Soviet Red Army and Yugoslavia became one-party Communist states and the project of coercive conversion to atheism continued. The Soviet Union ended its war time truce with the Russian Orthodox Church, and extended its persecutions to the newly Communist Eastern bloc: "In Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and other Eastern European countries, Catholic leaders who were unwilling to be silent were denounced, publicly humiliated or imprisoned by the Communists. Leaders of the national Orthodox Churches in Romania and Bulgaria had to be cautious and submissive", wrote Geoffrey Blainey. While the churches were generally not treated as severely as they had been in the USSR, nearly all of their schools and many of their churches were closed, and they lost their formally prominent roles in public life. Children were taught atheism, and clergy were imprisoned by the thousands. In the Eastern Bloc, Christian churches, along with Jewish synagogues and Islamic mosques were forcibly "converted into museums of atheism."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Along with executions, some other actions which were taken against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI claimed that Christians were the most persecuted religious group in the contemporary world. In a speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council's 23rd session in May 2013, then-Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, Silvano Maria Tomasi claimed that "an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year". This number was supported by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at the evangelical Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, which published a statement in December 2016 stating that "between 2005 and 2015 there were 900,000 Christian martyrs worldwide – an average of 90,000 per year." Tomasi's radio address to the Council called the figures both a "shocking conclusion" and "credible research". The accuracy of this number, based on population estimates in a 1982 edition of the "World Christian Encyclopedia", is disputed. Almost all died in wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where all sides of the Second Congo War and subsequent conflicts are majority-Christian, and previous years included victims of the Rwandan genocide, an ethnic conflict and a part of the First Congo War where again most belligerents were Christian. As a result, the "BBC News Magazine" cautioned that "when you hear that 100,000 Christians are dying for their faith, you need to keep in mind that the vast majority – 90,000 – are people who were killed in DR Congo."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Klaus Wetzel, an internationally recognized expert on religious persecution, states that this discrepancy in numbers is due to the contradiction between the definition used by Gordon-Conwell defining Christian martyrdom in the widest possible sense, and the more sociological and political definition Wetzel and Open Doors and others such as "The International Institute for Religious Freedom" (IIRF) use, which is: 'those who are killed, "who would not have been killed", if they had not been Christians.'


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Numbers are affected by several important factors, for example, population distribution is a factor. The United States submits an annual report on religious freedom and persecution to the Congress which recognizes restrictions on religious freedom, ranging from low to very high, in three-quarters of the world's countries including the United States. In approximatrly one quarter of the world's countries, there are high and very high restrictions and oppression, and some of those countries, such as China and India, Indonesia and Pakistan are among those with the highest populations. About three-quarters of the world's population live in the most oppressive countries in the world.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Numbers of martyrs are especially difficult to accurately identify, because religious persecution often occurs in conjunction with wider conflicts. This fact complicates the identification of acts of persecution because they may be politically rather than religiously motivated. For example, the U.S. Department of State identified 1.4 million Christians in Iraq in 1991 when the Gulf War began. By 2010, the number of Christians dropped to 700,000 and by 2011 it was estimated that there were between 450,000 and 200,000 Christians left in Iraq. During that period, actions against Christians included the burning and bombing of churches, the bombing of Christian owned businesses and homes, kidnapping, murder, demands for protection money, and anti-Christian rhetoric in the media with those responsible saying that they wanted to rid the country of its Christians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: A report which was released by the UK's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and prepared by Philip Mounstephen, the Bishop of Truro, in July 2019, and a report on worldwide restrictions on religious freedom by the PEW organization, both stated that the number of countries where Christians were suffering as a result of religious persecution was increasing, rising from 125 in 2015 to 144 as of 2018. PEW has published a caution concerning the interpretation of its numbers: "The Center's recent report ... does not attempt to estimate the number of victims in each country... it does not speak to the intensity of harassment..." France, who restricts the wearing of the hijab, is counted as a persecuting country equally with Nigeria and Pakistan where, according to the Global Security organization, Christians have been killed for their faith.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte – the International Society for Human Rights – in Frankfurt, Germany, is a non-governmental organization with 30,000 members from 38 countries who monitor human rights. In September 2009, then chairman Martin Lessenthin, issued a report estimating that 80% of acts of religious persecution around the world were aimed at Christians at that time.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: W. J. Blumenfeld says that Christianity enjoys dominant group privilege in the US and some other Western societies. Christianity is, numerically, the largest religion in the U.S. according to PEW, with 43% of Americans identifying themselves as Protestants and one in five (20%) of Americans identifying themselves as Catholics. It remains the largest religion in the world. Roughly two-thirds of the world's countries have Christian majorities. Due to the large number of Christian majority countries, differing groups of Christians are harassed and persecuted in Christian countries such as Eritrea and Mexico "more often" than in most Muslim countries, though not in greater numbers.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to PEW, the Middle East and North Africa have experienced the highest rates of restrictions on non-favorite religions for the last decade, being higher than any other region, each year, from 2007 to 2017. But it's the gap between this region and other regions where government favoritism is concerned that is particularly large: "the average country in this region scores nearly twice as high on measures of government favoritism of one religion as the average country in any other region".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan independent federal agency which was created by the United States Congress in 1998, published a study of the predominantly Muslim countries which are located in the Middle Eastern/North African region. It concludes that, of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, "28 percent live in ten countries that declare themselves to be Islamic states. In addition, there are 12 predominantly Muslim countries that have chosen to declare that Islam is the official state religion ... Taken together, the 22 states that declare that Islam is the official religion account for 58 percent – or just over 600 million – of the 1 billion Muslims living in 44 predominantly Muslim countries.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: "Several countries with constitutions establishing Islam as the state religion either do not contain guarantees of the right to freedom of religion or belief, or they contain guarantees that, on their face, do not compare favorably with all aspects of international [human rights] standards." All of these countries defer to religious authorities or doctrines on legal issues in some way. For example, "when one spouse is Muslim and the other has a different religion (such as Coptic Christianity), or if spouses are members of different Christian denominations, courts still defer to Islamic family law." Grim and Finke say their studies indicate that: "When religious freedoms are denied through the regulation of religious profession or practice, violent religious persecution and conflict increase."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In its Annual Report, the USCIRF lists 14 "Countries of Particular Concern" with regard to religious rights and it also lists 15 additional countries which it has recommended be placed on the U.S. Department of State's Special Watch List (SWL), a lesser category than the CPC designation. Of these 29 countries, 17 of them are predominantly Muslim countries, mostly located in the Middle East and North Africa, representing less than half of the 44 predominantly Muslim countries in the world, the rest of which are either secular or have not declared any state religion. Of the remaining countries, two of them have populations which are almost equally Christian and Muslim, both of them have official state versions of Christianity and Islam, four other countries are predominantly Christian countries where adherents of non-official or non-favored varieties of Christianity and adherents of other religions are persecuted, one country is predominantly Buddhist, and one country is predominantly Hindu. Eight of these countries are either current or former communist states such as China, Cuba, Russia and Vietnam. Twenty four of the USCIRF's twenty nine countries are also included on Open Doors Worldwide Watch list because they are especially dangerous for Christians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Eleven predominantly Muslim countries are ruled by governments which proclaim that their states are secular. "These countries account for nearly 140 million Muslims, or 13.5 percent of the 1 billion Muslims living in predominantly Muslim countries. The 11 remaining predominantly Muslim countries have not made any constitutional declaration concerning the Islamic or secular nature of the state, and have not made Islam the official state religion. This group of countries, which includes Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, accounts for over 250 million Muslims". This demonstrates that the majority of the world's Muslim population live in countries that either proclaim the state to be secular, or that make no pronouncements concerning Islam as the official state religion.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Christians have faced increasing levels of persecution in the Muslim world. Muslim-majority nations in which Christian populations have suffered acute discrimination, persecution, repression, violence and in some cases death, mass murder or ethnic cleansing include; Iraq, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Qatar, Kuwait, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives. Native Christian communities are subjected to persecution in several Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt and Pakistan.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Furthermore, any Muslim person – including any person who was born into a Muslim family or any person who became a Muslim at a given point in his or her life – who converts to Christianity or re-converts to it, is considered an apostate. Apostasy, the conscious abandonment of Islam by a Muslim in word or deed, including conversion to Christianity, is punishable as a crime under applications of the Sharia (countries in the graph). There are, however, cases in which a Muslim will adopt the Christian faith, secretly without declaring his/her apostasy. As a result, they are practising Christians, but legally, they are still considered Muslims, and as a result, they can still face the death penalty according to the Sharia. Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman, was sentenced to death for apostasy in 2014, because the government of Sudan classified her as a Muslim, even though she was raised as a Christian.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: A report by the international catholic charity organisation Aid to the Church in Need said that the religiously motivated ethnic cleansing of Christians is so severe that they are set to completely disappear from parts of the Middle-East within a decade.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: A report which was commissioned by the British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt and published in May 2019 stated that the level and nature of persecution of Christians in the Middle East "is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN." The report coted Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia where "the situation of Christians and other minorities has reached an alarming stage." The report attributed the sources of persecution to extremist groups and the failure of state institutions.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In Afghanistan, Abdul Rahman, a 41-year-old citizen, was charged in 2006 with rejecting Islam, a crime punishable by death under Sharia law. He has since been released into exile in the West under intense pressure from Western governments.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 2008, the Taliban killed a British charity worker, Gayle Williams, "because she was working for an organization which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan" even though she was extremely careful not to try to convert Afghans.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Since independence, there has been a rise of Islamism. The 1996 murder of Pierre Claverie, OP, Bishop of Oran was an act of violence by Islamic militants against the Christian community.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On the night of 26–27 March 1996, seven monks from the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, belonging to the Roman Catholic Trappist Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.), were kidnapped in the Algerian Civil War. They were held for two months and were found dead on 21 May 1996. The circumstances of their kidnapping and death remain controversial; the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) allegedly took responsibility for both, but the then French military attaché, retired General Francois Buchwalter, reports that they were accidentally killed by the Algerian army in a rescue attempt, and claims have been made that the GIA itself was a cat's paw of Algeria's secret services (DRS).


title: Persecution of Christians

text: A Muslim gang allegedly looted and burned to the ground, a Pentecostal church in Tizi Ouzou on 9 January 2010. The pastor was quoted as saying that worshipers fled when local police supposedly left a group of local protestors unchecked. Many Bibles were burnt.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: There has been large scale persecution in Bangladesh which has included forced conversions, the destruction of Churches, the seizure of land from Christians and killings of Christians in Bangladesh over decades.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: This included abductions, attacks and forced conversions on Rohingya Christians in refugee camps in Bangladesh.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In Chad, Christians form a minority, at 41% of the population. They have faced an increasing level of persecution from local officials as well as Islamist groups like Boko Haram and tribal herdsmen. Persecution includes burning of Christian villages, closing of markets and killings.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Foreign missionaries are allowed in the country if they restrict their activities to social improvements and refrain from proselytizing. Particularly in Upper Egypt, the rise of extremist Islamist groups such as the Gama'at Islamiya during the 1980s was accompanied by increased attacks on Copts and increased attacks on Coptic Orthodox churches; since then, the decline of those attacks has coincided with the decline of those organizations, but attacks still occur. The police have been accused of siding with the attackers in some of these cases.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Since the 1980s, periodic acts of violence have been committed against Christians, and they include attacks on Coptic Orthodox churches in Alexandria in April 2006, and sectarian violence in Dahshur in July 2012. From 2011 to 2013, more than 150 kidnappings, for ransom, of Christians had been reported in the Minya governorate. Christians have also been convicted for "contempt of religion", such as poet Fatima Naoot in 2016.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Although Christians are a minority in Indonesia, Christianity is one of the six officially recognized religions of Indonesia and religious freedom is permitted. But there are some religious tensions and persecutions in the country, and most of the tensions and persecutions are civil and not by state.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In January 1999 tens of thousands died when Muslim gunmen terrorized Christians who had voted for independence in East Timor. These events came toward the end of the East Timor genocide, which began around 1975.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In Indonesia, religious conflicts have typically occurred in Western New Guinea, Maluku (particularly Ambon), and Sulawesi. The presence of Muslims in these traditionally Christian regions is in part a result of the "transmigrasi" program of population re-distribution. Conflicts have often occurred because of the aims of radical Islamist organizations such as Jemaah Islamiah or Laskar Jihad to impose Sharia, with such groups attacking Christians and destroying over 600 churches. In 2005 three Christian girls were beheaded as retaliation for previous Muslim deaths in Christian-Muslim rioting. The men were imprisoned for the murders, including Jemaah Islamiyah's district ringleader Hasanuddin. On going to jail, Hasanuddin said, "It's not a problem (if I am being sentenced to prison), because this is a part of our struggle." Later in November 2011, another fight between Christians against Muslims happen in Ambon. Muslims allegedly set fire to several Christian houses, forcing the occupants to leave the buildings.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In December 2011, a second church in Bogor, West Java, was ordered to halt its activities by the local mayor. Another Catholic church had been built there in 2005. Previously a Christian church, GKI Taman Yasmin, had been sealed. Local authorities refused to lift a ban on the activities of the church, despite an order from the Supreme Court of Indonesia. Local authorities have persecuted the Christian church for three years. While the state has ordered religious toleration, it has not enforced these orders.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In Aceh Province, the only province in Indonesia with autonomous Islamic Shari'a Law, 20 churches in Singkil Regency face threat of demolition due to gubernatorial decree requires the approval of 150 worshippers, while the ministerial decree also requires the approval of 60 local residents of different faiths. On 30 April 2012, all the 20 churches (17 Protestant churches, 2 Catholic churches and one place of worship belonging to followers of a local nondenominational faith) have been closed down by order, from the Acting Regent which also ordered members of the congregations to tear down the churches by themselves. Most of the churches slated for demolition were built in the 1930s and 1940s. The regency has 2 churches open, both built after 2000.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 9 May 2017, Christian governor of Jakarta Basuki Tjahaja Purnama has been sentenced to two years in prison by the North Jakarta District Court after being found guilty of committing a criminal act of blasphemy.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Even though Iran recognizes Assyrian and Armenian Christians as ethnic and religious minorities (along with Jews and Zoroastrians) and they also have representatives in the Iranian Parliament, they are still forced to adhere to the Iranian government's strict interpretation of Islamic law. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Muslim converts to Christianity (typically, Muslim converts to Protestant Christianity) have been arrested and sometimes, they have even been executed. Youcef Nadarkhani is an Iranian Christian pastor who was arrested on charges of apostasy in October 2009 and subsequently, he was sentenced to death. In June 2011, the Iranian Supreme Court overruled his death sentence on the condition that he recant his conversion to Christianity, which he refused to do. In a reversal on 8 September 2012, he was acquitted of the charges of apostasy and extortion, and as a result, he was sentenced to time served for the charge of "propaganda against the regime", and he was immediately released from prison.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the UNHCR, although Christians (almost exclusively ethnic Assyrians and Armenians) represented less than 5% of the total Iraqi population in 2007, they made up 40% of the refugees living in nearby countries.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 2004, five churches were destroyed by bombing, and Christians were targeted by kidnappers and Islamic extremists, leading to tens of thousands of Christians fleeing to Assyrian regions in the north or leaving the country altogether.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 2006, the number of Assyrian Christians dropped to between 500,000 and 800,000, of whom 250,000 lived in Baghdad. An exodus to the Assyrian homeland in northern Iraq, and to neighboring countries of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey left behind closed parishes, seminaries and convents. As a small minority, who until recently were without a militia of their own, Assyrian Christians were persecuted by both Shi'a and Sunni Muslim militias, Kurdish Nationalists, and also by criminal gangs.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: As of 21 June 2007, the UNHCR estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighbouring countries, and 2 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. A 25 May 2007 article notes that in the past seven months 69 people from Iraq have been granted refugee status in the United States.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 2007, Chaldean Catholic Church priest Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni and subdeacons Basman Yousef Dawid, Wahid Hanna Esho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed were killed in the ancient city of Mosul. Ganni was driving with his three deacons when they were stopped and demanded to convert to Islam, when they refused they were shot. Ganni was the pastor of the Chaldean Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul and a graduate from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Angelicum" in Rome in 2003 with a licentiate in ecumenical theology. Six months later, the body of Paulos Faraj Rahho, archbishop of Mosul, was found buried near Mosul. He was kidnapped on 29 February 2008 when his bodyguards and driver were killed. See 2008 attacks on Christians in Mosul for more details.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 2010 there was an attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic cathedral of Baghdad, Iraq, that took place during Sunday evening Mass on 31 October 2010. The attack left at least 58 people dead, after more than 100 had been taken hostage. The al-Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgent group The Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack; though Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, amongst others condemned the attack.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 2013, Assyrian Christians were departing for their ancestral heartlands in the Nineveh Plains, around Mosul, Erbil and Kirkuk. Assyrian militias were established to protect villages and towns.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: During the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive, the Islamic State of Iraq issued a decree in July that all indigenous Assyrian Christians in the area of its control must leave the lands that Assyrians have occupied for 5000 years, be subject to extortion in the form of a special tax of approximately $470 per family, convert to Islam, or be murdered. Many of them took refuge in nearby Kurdish-controlled regions of Iraq. Christian homes have been painted with the Arabic letter ن ("nūn") for "Nassarah" (an Arabic word Christian) and a declaration that they are the "property of the Islamic State". On 18 July, ISIS militants seemed to have changed their minds and announced that all Christians would need to leave or be killed. Most of those who left had their valuable possessions stolen by the Islamic terrorists. According to Patriarch Louis Sako, there are no Christians remaining in the once Christian dominated city of Mosul for the first time in the nation's history, although this situation has not been verified.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In Malaysia, although Islam is the official religion, Christianity is tolerated under Article 3 and Article 11 of the Malaysian constitution. But at some point, the spread of Christianity is a particular sore point for the Muslim majority, the Malaysian government has also persecuted Christian groups who were perceived to be attempting to proselytize Muslim audiences. Those showing interest in the Christian faith or other faith practices not considered orthodox by state religious authorities are usually sent either by the police or their family members to state funded "Faith Rehabilitation Centres" () where they are counseled to remain faithful to Islam and some states have provisions for penalties under their respective Shariah legislations for apostasy from Islam.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: It has been the practice of the church in Malaysia to not actively proselytize to the Muslim community. Christian literature is required by law to carry a caption "for non-Muslims only". Article 11(4) of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia allows the states to prohibit the propagation of other religions to Muslims, and most (with the exception of Penang, Sabah, Sarawak and the Federal Territories) have done so. There is no well-researched agreement on the actual number of Malaysian Muslim converts to Christianity in Malaysia. According to the latest population census released by the Malaysian Statistics Department, there are none, according to Ustaz Ridhuan Tee, they are 135 and according to Tan Sri Dr Harussani Zakaria, they are 260,000. See also Status of religious freedom in Malaysia.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: There are, however, cases in which a Muslim will adopt the Christian faith without declaring his/her apostasy openly. In effect, they are practicing Christians, but legally Muslims.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the 11 Northern states of Nigeria that have introduced the Islamic system of law, the Sharia, sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians have resulted in many deaths, and some churches have been burned. More than 30,000 Christians were displaced from their homes in Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Boko Haram Islamist group has bombed churches and killed numerous Christians who they regard as kafirs (infidels). Some Muslim aid organisations in Nigeria reportedly reserve aid for Muslims displaced by Boko Haram. Christian Bishop William Naga reported to Open Doors UK that, "They will give food to the refugees, but if you are a Christian they will not give you food. They will openly tell you that the relief is not for Christians."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In Pakistan, 1.5% of the population are Christian. Many churches built during the colonial Indian period, prior to the partition, remain locked, with the Pakistani government refusing to hand them over to the Christian community. Others have been victims of church arsons or demolitions.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Pakistani law mandates that "blasphemies" of the Qur'an are to be met with punishment. At least a dozen Christians have been given death sentences, and half a dozen murdered after being accused of violating blasphemy laws. In 2005, 80 Christians were behind bars due to these laws. The Pakistani-American author Farahnaz Ispahani has called treatment of Christians in Pakistan a "drip-drip genocide".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Ayub , a Christian, was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death in 1998. He was accused by a neighbor of stating that he supported British writer Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses". Lower appeals courts upheld the conviction. However, before the Pakistan Supreme Court, his lawyer was able to prove that the accuser had used the conviction to force family off their land and then acquired control of the property. has been released.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In October 2001, gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a Protestant congregation in the Punjab, killing 18 people. The identities of the gunmen are unknown. Officials think it might be a banned Islamic group.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In March 2002, five people were killed in an attack on a church in Islamabad, including an American schoolgirl and her mother.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In August 2002, masked gunmen stormed a Christian missionary school for foreigners in Islamabad; six people were killed and three injured. None of those killed were children of foreign missionaries.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In August 2002, grenades were thrown at a church in the grounds of a Christian hospital in north-west Pakistan, near Islamabad, killing three nurses.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 25 September 2002, two terrorists entered the "Peace and Justice Institute", Karachi, where they separated Muslims from the Christians, and then murdered seven Christians by shooting them in the head. All of the victims were Pakistani Christians. Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil said the victims had their hands tied and their mouths had been covered with tape.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In December 2002, three young girls were killed when a hand grenade was thrown into a church near Lahore on Christmas Day.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In November 2005, 3,000 Muslims attacked Christians in Sangla Hill in Pakistan and destroyed Roman Catholic, Salvation Army and United Presbyterian churches. The attack was over allegations of violation of blasphemy laws by a Pakistani Christian named Yousaf . The attacks were widely condemned by some political parties in Pakistan.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 5 June 2006, a Pakistani Christian, Nasir Ashraf, was assaulted for the "sin" of using public drinking water facilities near Lahore.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: One year later, in August 2007, a Christian missionary couple, Rev. Arif and Kathleen Khan, were gunned down by Muslim terrorists in Islamabad. Pakistani police believed that the murders was committed by a member of Khan's parish over alleged sexual harassment by Khan. This assertion is widely doubted by Khan's family as well as by Pakistani Christians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In August 2009, six Christians, including four women and a child, were burnt alive by Muslim militants and a church set ablaze in Gojra, Pakistan when violence broke out after alleged desecration of a Qur'an in a wedding ceremony by Christians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 8 November 2010, a Christian woman from Punjab Province, Asia Noreen Bibi, was sentenced to death by hanging for violating Pakistan's blasphemy law. The accusation stemmed from a 2009 incident in which Bibi became involved in a religious argument after offering water to thirsty Muslim farm workers. The workers later claimed that she had blasphemed the Muhammed. Until 2019, Bibi was in solitary confinement. A cleric had offered $5,800 to anyone who killed her. As of May 2019, Bibi and her family have left Pakistan and now reside in Canada.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 2 March 2011, the only Christian minister in the Pakistan government was shot dead. Shahbaz Bhatti, Minister for Minorities, was in his car along with his niece. Around 50 bullets struck the car. Over 10 bullets hit Bhatti. Before his death, he had publicly stated that he was not afraid of the Taliban's threats and was willing to die for his faith and beliefs. He was targeted for opposing the anti-free speech "blasphemy" law, which punishes insulting Islam or its Prophet. A fundamentalist Muslim group claimed responsibility.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 22 September 2013, at least 78 people, including 34 women and 7 children, were killed and over 100 wounded in a suicide attack on the over 10-year-old All Saints Church in Peshawar after a service on Sunday morning.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: on 4 November 2014, a Christian couple were burnt alive in the Punjab province of Pakistan, on a false rumor of blasphemy against the Quran.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 15 March 2015, 10 people were killed in suicide bombings on Christian Churches in the city of Lahore.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 27 March 2016, a suicide bomber from a Pakistani Taliban faction killed at least 60 people and injured 300 others in an attack at Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in Lahore, Pakistan, and the group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it intentionally targeted Christians celebrating Easter Sunday.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 18 December 2017, six people were killed and dozens injured in a suicide bombing on a Methodist church in the city of Quetta, Balochistan province.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 3 April 2018, four members of a Christian family were shot to death and a young girl injured in the city of Quetta where they had arrived from Punjab province to celebrate Easter.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 5 March 2018, an armed mob of over two dozen, attacked the Gospel Assembly church in Punjab province and beat up Christian worshippers including women and children.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Saudi Arabia is an Islamic state that practices Wahhabism and restricts all other religions, including the possession of religious items such as the Bible, crucifixes, and Stars of David. Strict sharia is enforced. Muslims are forbidden to convert to another religion. If one does so and does not recant, they can be executed.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In September 2011 militants sworn to eradicate Christianity from Somalia beheaded two Christian converts. A third Christian convert was beheaded in Mogadishu in early 2012.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 1992 there were mass arrests and torture of local priests. Prior to partition, southern Sudan had a number of Christian villages. These were subsequently wiped out by Janjaweed militias.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Christians make up approximately 10% of Syria's population of 17.2 million people. The majority of Syrian Christians are once Western Aramaic speaking but now largely Arabic speaking Arameans-Syriacs, with smaller minorities of Eastern Aramaic speaking Assyrians and Armenians also extant. While religious persecution has been relatively low level compared to other Middle Eastern nations, many of the Christians have been pressured into identifying as Arab Christians, with the Assyrian and Armenian groups retaining their native languages.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In FY 2016, when the US dramatically increased the number of refugees admitted from Syria, the US let in 12,587 refugees from the country. Fewer than 1% were Christian according to the Pew Research Center analysis of State Department Refugee Processing Center data.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is still in a difficult position. Turkish law requires the Ecumenical Patriarch to be an ethnic Greek who holds Turkish citizenship since birth, although most members of Turkey's Greek minority have been expelled. The state's expropriation of church property is an additional difficulty faced by the Church of Constantinople. In November 2007, a 17th-century chapel of "Our Lord's Transfiguration" at the Halki seminary was almost totally demolished by the Turkish forestry authority. There was no advance warning given for the demolition work and it was only stopped after appeals were filed by the Ecumenical Patriarch.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The difficulties currently experienced by the Assyrians and Armenian Orthodox minorities in Turkey are the result of an anti-Armenian and anti-Christian attitude which is espoused by ultra-nationalist groups such as the Grey Wolves. According to the Minority Rights Group, the Turkish government recognizes Armenians and Assyrians as minorities but in Turkey, this term is used to denote second-class status.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In February 2006, Father Andrea Santoro was murdered in Trabzon. On 18 April 2007 in the Zirve Publishing House, Malatya, Turkey. Three employees of the Bible publishing house were attacked, tortured and murdered by five Sunni Muslim assailants.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Christian presence in Yemen dates back to the fourth century AD when a number of Himyarites embrace Christianity due to the efforts of Theophilos the Indian. Currently, there are no official statistics on their numbers, but they are estimated to be between 3,000 and 25,000 people, and most of them are either refugees or temporary residents. Freedom of worship, conversion from Islam and establishing facilities dedicated for worship are not recognized as rights in the country's Constitution and laws. At the same time, Wahabbi activities linked to Al-Islah was being facilitated, financed and encouraged from multiple fronts including the Ministry of Endowments and Guidance, which says that its tasks "to contribute to the development of Islamic awareness and circulation of the publication Education and Islamic morals and consolidation in the life of public and private citizens."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa has worked in Aden since 1992, and it has three other centers in Sana'a, Taiz and Hodeidah. Three Catholic nuns were killed in Hodeidah in 1998, two of them were from India and the third was from the Philippines at the hands of a member of Al-Islah named Abdullah al-Nashiri, who argued that they were calling Muslims to convert to Christianity. In 2002, three Americans were killed in Baptists Hospital at the hands of another Al-Islah member named Abed Abdul Razak Kamel. Survivors say that the suspect (Al-Islah) was "a political football" who had been raised by Islamists, who talked about it often in mosques and who described hospital workers as "spies". But they emphasized that these views are only held by a minority of Yemenis. In December 2015, an old Catholic church in Aden was destroyed.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Since the escalation of the Yemeni crisis in March 2015, six priests from John Bosco remained, and twenty workers for charitable missions in the country, described by Pope Francis by the courage to fortitude amid war and conflict. He called the Apostolic Vicar of Southern Arabia to pray for all the oppressed and tortured, expelled from their homes, and killed unjustly. In all cases, regardless of the values and ethics of the warring forces in Yemen on religious freedom, it is proved that the Missionaries of Charity were not active in the field of evangelization according to the testimonies of beneficiaries of its services.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: On 4 March 2016, an incident named Mother Teresa's Massacre in Aden occurred, 16 were killed including 4 Indian Catholic nuns, 2 from Rwanda, and the rest were from India and Kenya, along with a Yemeni, 2 Guards, a cook, 5 Ethiopian women, and all of them were volunteers. One Indian priest named Tom Ozhonaniel was kidnapped. The identities of the attackers are unknown, and media outlets published a statement attributed to Ansar al-Sharia, one of the many jihadist organizations currently active in the country, but the group denies its involvement in the incident.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Bhutan is a conservative Buddhist country. Article 7 of the 2008 constitution guarantees religious freedom, but also forbids conversion "by means of coercion or inducement". According to Open Doors, to many Bhutanese this hinders the ability of Christians to proselytize.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: During the Cultural Revolution, all Christian churches, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes, they were converted into buildings which were used for other purposes, looted, and destroyed.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Chinese Communist Party and government and the Chinese Buddhist organ try to maintain tight control over all religions, so the only legal Christian Churches (the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association) are those churches which are under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. Churches which are not controlled by the government are shut down, and their members are imprisoned. Gong Shengliang, head of the South China Church, was sentenced to death in 2001. Even though his sentence was commuted to a jail sentence, Amnesty International reports that he has been tortured. A Christian lobby group reports that about 300 Christians who were caught attending unregistered house churches were in jail in 2004.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In January 2016, a prominent Christian church leader Rev Gu Yuese who criticised the mass removal of church crucifixes by the government was arrested for "embezzling funds". Chinese authorities have removed hundreds of crosses from churches in Zhejiang, a region which is known as "China's bible belt". In Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, Gu led a church which had enough capacity to seat 5,000 people, his church was China's largest authorized church.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 2018, the Associated Press reported that China's leader and Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping "is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982", which has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the Russian Federation, Jehovah's Witnesses have been classified as "extremists" and persecuted since 2017.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Modern-day persecution also exists and is carried out by Hindu nationalists. A report by Human Rights Watch stated that there is a rise in anti-Christian violence due to Hindu nationalism and Smita Narula, Researcher, Asia Division of Human Rights Watch stated "Christians are the new scapegoat in India's political battles. Without immediate and decisive action by the government, communal tensions will continue to be exploited for political and economic ends." Violence against Christians in India has been seen by the Human Rights Watch as part of the right-wing Sangh Parivar organizations' orchestrated effort to encourage and exploit sectarian violence to raise their political power base.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The United Christian Forum for Human Rights reported that in 1998, 90 separate acts of violence were committed against Christian churches or against Christians compared to only 53 attacks which took place from 1964 to 1997 in India. The Human Rights Watch reported that most of the reported instances of violence towards Christians took place in 1998 in the state of Gujarat, the same year that the Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP) came to state power. The Human Rights Watch reported that during the 1998 attacks on Christians in southeastern Gujarat from 25 December 1988 to 3 January 1999, at least 20 prayer halls and churches had been damaged or burned down, and Christians and Christian institutions had been attacked in the Dangs and its surrounding districts, and at least 25 villages had reported incidents of burning and damage to prayer halls and churches throughout Gujarat by Bajrang Dal, BJP, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM). More than 100 churches and church institutions were burnt down, vandalised or damaged during the 2007 Christmas violence in Kandhamal by mobs led by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, Bajrang Dal, VHP and the Kui Samaj, the incident also killed 3 Christians while other reports put the death toll to 50. The 2008 Kandhamal violence led to 39 Christians killed, according to government reports. More than 395 churches have been burnt down or vandalized, more than 5,600 Christian houses have been plundered or burned down, over 600 villages have been ransacked and over 54,000 Christians have been left homeless. Other reports put the death toll at nearly 100. Under threat of violence, many Christians were forced to convert to Hinduism. This violence was led by the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal. The 2008 Kandhamal violence led to several attacks against Christians and Churches in southern Karnataka in the same year by Bajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sena. The violence also spread to the state of Tamil Nadu, the police reported 20 graves desecrated and many churches vandalized by members of the Hindu Munnani. There have also been attacks on Christians in the states of Kerala and Madhya Pradesh.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Muslims in India who convert to Christianity have been subjected to harassment, intimidation, and attacks by Muslims. In Jammu and Kashmir, a Christian convert and missionary, Bashir Tantray, was killed, by Islamic militants in broad daylight in 2006.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The organisations involved in persecution of Christians have stated that the violence is an expression of "spontaneous anger" of "vanvasis" against "forcible conversion" activities undertaken by missionaries. These claims have been disputed by Christians a belief described as mythical and propaganda by Sangh Parivar; the opposing organisations objects in any case to all conversions as a "threat to national unity". Religious scholar Cyril Veliath of Sophia University stated that the attacks by Hindus on Christians were the work of individuals motivated by "disgruntled politicians or phony religious leaders" and where religion is concerned the typical Hindu is an "exceptionally amicable and tolerant person ... Hinduism as a religion could well be one of the most accommodating in the world. Rather than confront and destroy, it has a tendency to welcome and assimilate."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In its controversial annual human rights reports for 1999, the United States Department of State criticised India for "increasing societal violence against Christians." The report listed over 90 incidents of anti-Christian violence, ranging from damage of religious property to violence against Christians pilgrims. In 1997, 24 such incidents were reported. Recent waves of anti-conversion laws passed by some Indian states like Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh is claimed to be a gradual and continuous institutionalization of Hindutva by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour of the US State Department.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Violence against Christians have seen a sharp increase of 60 percent between 2016 and 2019, according to the annual report released by Persecution Relief. The Alliance Defending Freedom data shows that in 2019 alone, a record 328 violent attacks against Christians in India were reported.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: North Korea is an atheist state where the public practice of religion is discouraged. "The Oxford Handbook of Atheism" states that "North Korea maintains a state-sanctioned and an enforced form of atheism".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: North Korea leads the list of the 50 countries in which Christians are persecuted the most at the present time according to a watchlist which is published by Open Doors. It is currently estimated that more than 50,000 Christians are locked inside concentration camps because of their faith, where they are systematically subjected to mistreatment such as unrestrained torture, mass-starvation and even imprisonment and death by asphyxiation in gas chambers. This means that 20% of North Korea's Christian community lives in concentration camps. The number of Christians who are being murdered for their faith seems to be increasing as time goes on because in 2013 the death toll was 1,200 and in 2014, this figure doubled, rendering it close to 2,400 murdered Christians. North Korea has earned the top spot 12 years in a row.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The establishment of French Indochina once led to a high Christian population. Regime changes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries led to increased persecutions of minority religious groups. The Center for Public Policy Analysis has claimed that killings, torture or imprisonment and the forced starvation of local groups are all common in parts of Vietnam and Laos. In more recent years it has stated that the persecution of Christians is increasing.


Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is a 2019 action role-playing video game developed by Koei Tecmo's Team Ninja and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the third installment in the "Marvel: Ultimate Alliance" series, following 2006's "" and 2009's "", and the first "Ultimate Alliance" game produced without the involvement of previous publisher Activision, whose license to publish Marvel games expired in 2016. The game follows a new team of superheroes as they come together to save the universe from Thanos and the eponymous Black Order, who have launched a campaign to find the six Infinity Stones.


title: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

text: Upon release, the game received mixed reviews from critics, who generally found the gameplay and storyline fun but were disappointed that the game did not improve much upon its predecessors. As of December 2019, "Ultimate Alliance 3" has sold over 1 million copies worldwide.


text: Like the previous two entries, gameplay is reminiscent of a top-down dungeon crawler with an emphasis on cooperative play. Up to four players can play the game cooperatively locally either on the same screen with a single docked Nintendo Switch system or undocked with up to four systems, or online with friends or random player lobbies. Players choose four characters from various Marvel teams to traverse linear stages, fight enemies, and defeat bosses. Certain passive buffs are acquired with particular character combinations. Each character's controls are fundamentally identical; each has a jump, light attack, heavy attack, dodge, block, and four special abilities. Special abilities can be synced with the other three members for a synergy boost, with an especially powerful attack unleashed if all four party members sync up simultaneously. The combat system itself, as evident by the characters’ normal attacks and their damage properties, as well as lack of universal normal grab is similar to Koei Tecmo’s "Warriors" series. Additional characters are unlocked by story progression or optional Infinity Rift challenges, with more characters currently planned as free or paid downloadable content.


text: Character progression is handled in a similar manner to traditional role-playing games, with party members leveling up by defeating enemies and bosses. In addition to stat increases, passive buffs can be attached to characters by equipping ISO-8 crystals. A sprawling skill tree is also present, which allows characters to gain permanent stat increases by acquiring and spending in-game currency.


text: The plot of "Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order" is an original story written specifically for the game and disregards the stories and continuity of the first two games in the series.


text: While it takes inspiration with recently released Marvel projects such as "" and "", both of which were inspired by the 1991 storyline "The Infinity Gauntlet", the story was written to reflect its wider cast of characters and to stand apart from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the comics, and other popularized versions. Additionally the game takes inspiration from various Marvel Comics storylines such as the 2008 "Guardians of the Galaxy" series, "Spider-Verse", "New Avengers", the 2017 "Defenders" series, "Shadowland", "Avengers: Ultron Unlimited", "X-Men", "Avengers/Defenders War", Inhumans, Ta-Nehisi Coates's Black Panther, "Uncanny Avengers", "The Infinity Gauntlet", "Illuminati", "Avengers Assemble," "Infinity", "Doctor Strange: Damnation", "X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga," and Jack Kirby's "Fantastic Four".


text: The Mad Titan Thanos and his Black Order—Corvus Glaive, Proxima Midnight, Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian, and Supergiant—attempt to collect the six Infinity Stones in order to achieve galactic conquest. Originally guarded by Nebula and Ronan the Accuser, the Guardians of the Galaxy stumble upon their attempt to hide them from the group and end up accidentally alerting the Order to their presence. In desperation, Star-Lord uses the Space Stone to scatter the other stones on Earth, and to get him and his team to safety. As S.H.I.E.L.D. detects their presence, Nick Fury Jr. unites the Guardians and Earth's heroes to find them. Together they are able to retrieve the Time Stone from the Sinister Six led by Green Goblin during a breakout at the Raft; the Mind Stone from Ultron when he assaults the Avengers Tower; the Power Stone from the Hellfire Club and then again from the Brotherhood of Mutants, who briefly steal it during a Sentinel attack set up by Ultron on Professor X's Institute for Gifted Youngsters; the Reality Stone from Dormammu in the Dark Dimension; and the Soul Stone from A.I.M., led by MODOK, during an attack on Wakanda. Along the way, they help the Defenders retrieve an ISO-8 crystal from the Kingpin and face the Hand at Shadowland; stop an attempted coup d'état by Maximus the Mad at the Inhuman city of Attilan; and form uneasy alliances with Venom, the Brotherhood, Loki, and Thanos' illegitimate son Thane.


text: When the Black Order find them in Wakanda, Thane gives himself and the Infinity Stones over to them to ensure the heroes' safety, but Proxima Midnight nonetheless teleports them to Asgard, where they face Hela and Surtur, as well as HYDRA, led by the Red Skull, defeating them with the aid of the Valkyrie, Odin, and Loki. Odin then transports the heroes to Knowhere where the Black Order and the Nova Corps are waging war. The heroes battle the Black Order and manage to retrieve most of the Stones, but as they prepare to clash one final time, they are stopped by Thane using the Time Stone. While Thane is distracted trying to choose a side, Thanos attacks him from behind and places the Infinity Stones in his Infinity Gauntlet, transporting everyone to his throne for a final battle. However, Thane, now completely corrupted by the power of the stones, takes the Gauntlet from him and uses the Infinity Stones' power to don the Infinity Armor, planning to kill his father to prove his superiority and the heroes if they stand in his way.


text: The group is transported into the Heart of Infinity, where the Infinity Stones were forged at the center of the universe, and the heroes aid Thanos in stopping the out-of-control Thane. Thanos reveals that the power of the Infinity Armor is too great for any mortal being, even Thanos himself, and pulls the gauntlet from Thane's hand, causing both to disappear and leaving the heroes and the Infinity Stones behind. Ebony Maw then attempts to take the Infinity Stones for himself but is arrested by Richard Rider and the Nova Corps, as Rider plans to have him and the rest of the Black Order imprisoned at the Kyln. The heroes affirm they will be ready should Thanos ever return and agree to separate the Infinity Stones, hiding them in distant corners of the universe for safekeeping.


text: Sometime after Thanos and Thane's disappearances, Doctor Doom attacks Wakanda, seeking the Soul Stone in Black Panther's possession. All the heroes reunite to stop him, but Doom transports them to the Negative Zone so he can continue with his plans unhindered. The heroes are overwhelmed by the Negative Zone's native Insectoids, but are rescued by the Fantastic Four, who had been long trapped at Negative Zone while chasing Doom across dimensions before the heroes war against Thanos occurred. The four join the heroes to find Annihilus, the ruler of the Negative Zone, and defeat him, obtaining his Cosmic Control Rod and using it to open an interdimensional bridge gate to escape.


text: The heroes emerge from the gate in Latveria, discovering that many of its people have been absorbed into the Soul Stone. They make their way to Castle Doom, where Doom reveals that he is using his people's souls to resurrect a Celestial. The heroes defeat the Celestial, but Doom uses the cosmic power from the Soul Stone to transform himself into God Emperor Doom. The heroes ultimately triumph over Doom, freeing the souls of the Latverian citizens and reviving them. Afterward, Mister Fantastic reveals that Doom's plans were meant to protect the universe from unknown entities awakened by Thanos and Thane's clash, and the heroes, including Doom prepare to join forces once more against this new threat.


text: The game's features a base roster of 36 playable characters, including members of various superhero teams such as the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Defenders, and many others. Fourteen additional characters from "Marvel Knights", "X-Men", and "Fantastic Four" are featured as paid downloadable content via the post launch Expansion Pass. Two additional X-Men characters were also added via free updates.


text: The game was revealed at The Game Awards 2018. The game was released on July 19, 2019. An expansion pass for the game was announced at E3 2019 which revealed plans for additional content, including story missions, modes, and characters from "Marvel Knights", "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four" starting in fall of 2019. At San Diego Comic Con 2019, Marvel announced that additional characters Colossus and Cyclops from the "X-Men" would be added to the game via a free update, which was released on August 30, 2019, and revealed the four characters coming in the "Marvel Knights" DLC pack, "Curse of the Vampire", which was released on September 30, 2019. The contents of the "X-Men" DLC pack, "Rise of the Phoenix", were detailed at The Game Awards 2019 and announced to be released on December 23, 2019. The "Fantastic Four" DLC pack, "Shadow of Doom", which includes a new story set after the main campaign, was released on March 26, 2020.


text: "Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order" received an average score of 73/100 from review aggregator Metacritic, indicating mixed or average reception. Tom Marks of "IGN" called the game "a treat to play alone and with friends alike" in their review. Chris Carter of "Destructoid" said "There's plenty of room for improvement, but I had fun playing "Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order."" "Game Informer" Executive Editor Andrew Reiner noted that the game had enjoyable moments, but also moments where "it all falls apart", awarding the game a 7/10 rating. "Nintendo Life" writer Dom Reseigh-Lincoln mentioned that the game was fun, however also stating that "it doesn’t do anything particularly new or outstanding", giving it a "Great" score of 8/10. "CNN"'s Jacob Krol called the game "An all-around enjoyable experience with few setbacks."


text: It was the sixth best-selling game during its first week on sale in Japan, with 9,424 copies being sold. In August 2019, the NPD Group shared the best-selling games in the US during July 2019 and the game was 4th in the ranking, behind "Super Mario Maker 2", "" and "Madden NFL 20". By December 2019, the game had sold 1.02 million copies worldwide. As of December 2021, the game have sold 1.50 million copies.


title: Paraquat

text: Paraquat (trivial name; ), or "N","N"′-dimethyl-4,4′-bipyridinium dichloride (systematic name), also known as methyl viologen, is an organic compound with the chemical formula [(CHN)]Cl. It is classified as a viologen, a family of redox-active heterocycles of similar structure. This salt is one of the most widely used herbicides. It is quick-acting and non-selective, killing green plant tissue on contact. It is also toxic (lethal) to human beings and animals due to its redox activity, which produces superoxide anions. It has been linked to the development of Parkinson's disease and is banned in several countries.


title: Paraquat

text: Paraquat may be in the form of salt with chloride or other anions; quantities of the substance are sometimes expressed by cation mass alone (paraquat cation, paraquat ion).


title: Paraquat

text: Pyridine is coupled by treatment with sodium in ammonia followed by oxidation to give 4,4′-bipyridine. This chemical is then dimethylated with chloromethane to give the final product as the dichloride salt.


title: Paraquat

text: Use of other methylating agents gives the bispyridinium with alternate counterions. For example, Hugo Weidel's original synthesis used methyl iodide to produce the diiodide.


title: Paraquat

text: Although first synthesized in 1882, paraquat's herbicidal properties were not recognized until 1955 in the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) laboratories at Jealott's Hill. Paraquat was first manufactured and sold by ICI in early 1962 under the trade name Gramoxone, and is today among the most commonly used herbicides.


title: Paraquat

text: Paraquat is classified as a non-selective contact herbicide. The key characteristics that distinguish it from other agents used in plant protection products are:


title: Paraquat

text: The European Union approved the use of paraquat in 2004 but Sweden, supported by Denmark, Austria, and Finland, appealed this decision. In 2007, the court annulled the directive authorizing paraquat as an active plant protection substance stating that the 2004 decision was wrong in finding that there were no indications of neurotoxicity associated with paraquat and that the studies about the link between paraquat and Parkinson's disease should have been considered. Thus, paraquat has been banned in the European Union since 2007.


title: Paraquat

text: In the United States, paraquat is available primarily as a solution in various strengths. It is classified as "restricted use", which means that it can be used by licensed applicators only. The estimated use of paraquat in US agriculture is mapped by the US Geological Survey and shows a doubling from 2013 to 2018, the latest date for which figures are available, and now reaching annually.