title: Three Lions

text: The music was written by the Lightning Seeds singer Ian Broudie, while Baddiel and Skinner—presenters of the football comedy show "Fantasy Football League"—provided the lyrics. All three provided vocals. The title comes from the England team emblem.


title: Three Lions

text: Both the original version of "Three Lions" and the updated "Three Lions '98" reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming one of only three songs to top the British charts more than once with lyric variants; the others are "Mambo No. 5" (in versions by Lou Bega and Bob the Builder) and "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (by Band Aid, Band Aid 20 and Band Aid 30). It regularly reappears in the UK singles chart around major football tournaments involving the England team.


title: Three Lions

text: The song has been described as the "de facto" "anthem" of English football since 1996. Its chorus, with the refrain "It's coming home", has become a popular chant for fans at England games.


title: Three Lions

text: The Football Association (FA) asked the Lightning Seeds songwriter Ian Broudie to compose a song for the 1996 UEFA European Football Championship. He composed a melody he felt would make a good football chant, and asked the comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, presenters of the football comedy show "Fantasy Football League", to write the lyrics. Broudie refused the FA's offer to have football players sing on the song, saying he did not want it to be "England-istic" or nationalistic. He said it was more about "being a football fan, which, for 90% of the time, is losing".


title: Three Lions

text: According to Skinner's autobiography, the original lyrics included the line "Butcher ready for war" instead of "Bobby belting the ball". The line was a reference to a notorious World Cup qualifier against Sweden in 1989, when the defender Terry Butcher played despite his head bleeding profusely for much of the match. Baddiel later revealed a handwritten copy of the lyrics on Twitter with "Terry Butcher at war" shown as the replaced lyric. The FA requested that this line be changed to avoid suggestions of hooliganism imagery. The "ready for war" motif was later used in the 1998 version of the song, attributed to Paul Ince.


title: Three Lions

text: The crowd noise in the intro of the track is in fact Brøndby fans recorded by Ian Broudie at Anfield during a UEFA Cup tie in October 1995.


title: Three Lions

text: The song title refers to the three lions on the England team crest. The chorus lyric, "it's coming home", reflected the fact that the Euro 96 competition was the first football competition England had hosted since the 1966 FIFA World Cup but has evolved to include the concept of the cup returning to the homeland of the sport. The song makes references to several players, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Gordon Banks, who played in the 1966 World Cup winning team.


title: Three Lions

text: Unlike those of most football songs, the lyrics speak not of unbounded optimism for victory but instead of how, since England's victory in the 1966 FIFA World Cup, every tournament has ended in dashed hopes. However, the failures have not dampened the feeling that England could succeed again ("Three lions on a shirt / Jules Rimet still gleaming / Thirty years of hurt / never stopped me dreaming"). Baddiel said the song was "really about magical thinking. About assuming we are going to lose, reasonably, based on experience, but hoping that somehow we won't."


title: Three Lions

text: Despite the failures of the past, each tournament is greeted with fresh hopes that this might be the year they do it again: "I know that was then, but it could be again", and the song's chorus proclaimed that "It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, football's coming home" which refers, like the tournament's slogan, "Football comes home", to the invention of the modern game in England. Following England's success at the 2022 Women's Euro, Baddiel said: "I'm very happy to think the song would, in a way, be put to bed."


title: Three Lions

text: Pedro Romhanyi directed the music video for the original "Three Lions". Romhanyi said that while Skinner and Baddiel are comedians, they took the recording seriously, as "this is not about making a pop video; it's about doing something that's good for football." Baddiel recalled that Romhanyi insisted that the music video feel "homely", opening with Skinner and Baddiel making tea while watching television at home.


title: Three Lions

text: The video also features much archival footage and images of the referenced 1966 and later teams featuring for example, Bobby Moore, Nobby Stiles, and Gary Lineker. The contemporary pub scene was filmed at The Queen of the Isle in London, which was demolished in 2004. The pub scene includes a cameo appearance by 1966 team member Geoff Hurst, who is the first player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final.


title: Three Lions

text: The Britpop phenomenon was at its peak in 1996, and the Lightning Seeds were one of its leading acts, so their involvement gave the song very wide appeal. It reached number one on the singles chart, and as England progressed to the semi-finals, stadiums around the country echoed to the sound of fans singing the song after English victories over Scotland, the Netherlands and Spain. It was so popular that even other teams liked it. England faced Germany in the semi-finals, and Jürgen Klinsmann said later that the Germans were singing the song themselves on the way to the stadium, and the German team and the crowd sang the song as they paraded the trophy on the Römer balcony in Frankfurt. The single as a result reached number 49 on the German Singles Chart. The song was later sung by Germany fans during their team's first appearance at the new Wembley in 2007 and is still heard frequently on German radio stations. Broudie said he was shocked to hear German fans singing the song after beating England at Euro 96.


title: Three Lions

text: The original version still receives regular airplay in England around the time of major international football tournaments. It has been adopted as a terrace chant and is occasionally sung by fans at England international matches today. When it was sung by England fans at the 2006 World Cup after England took the lead against Paraguay, commentator John Motson remarked, "As football songs go, Three Lions is certainly the best". The song has sold 1.6 million copies in the UK as of June 2018.


title: Three Lions

text: The song reached number one on the UK Singles Chart again in 2018 following England reaching the semi-finals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, with the line "it's coming home" featuring heavily on social media. In doing so, it became the first song in history to have four separate stints at number one in the UK. By the following week, following England's semi-final defeat by Croatia, and elimination from the tournament, the single had fallen to number 97, setting what was at the time a record for the fastest ever descent from the top of the charts.


title: Three Lions

text: England lost in a penalty shootout against Germany in 1996, so the song's lyrics rang true once again. It was subsequently re-recorded with different lyrics (under the title "3 Lions '98") as an unofficial anthem for England's World Cup campaign in 1998 (unlike in 1996, when it was the "official song of the England football team") and landed the number-one spot in the singles chart for a second time, beating the official England song "(How Does It Feel to Be) On Top of the World?" by England United to the top spot by eight places.


title: Three Lions

text: This version of the song begins with the sound of stadium crowds singing the original chorus. It then samples Jonathan Pearce's commentary of the decisive penalty miss by England's Gareth Southgate in a shoot-out with Germany, where England were eliminated at the semi-final stage. Pearce's commentary of earlier rounds of the tournament was also used later in the song.


title: Three Lions

text: While the 1996 "Three Lions" song drew on various memorable moments from the previous 30 years, the 1998 version reflected on the Euro 96 tournament and its entry alongside previous disappointments, as well as the team's performance in qualifying for the 1998 World Cup. The verse mentioning specific players focused this time on the then-current England squad:


title: Three Lions

text: However, and amid much controversy, neither Gascoigne nor Pearce were selected for England's 1998 World Cup squad, which was not announced until some time after the song had been recorded.


title: Three Lions

text: As well as a karaoke version of the new song, the single featured a song called "Tout est Possible" (French for "Anything is Possible") as a B-side. The song was largely composed of a recurring chorus, samples from commentators and pundits, and the occasional short verse. It also started with a French speech sample referring to "La Coupe du Monde" (The World Cup).


title: Three Lions

text: There was also a completely new video made for the 1998 version of the song again directed by Pedro Romhanyi. The storyline is different as the trio are now travelling on a motor coach to France with a group of England fans for the 1998 World Cup. The video later portrays a match between the English fans and their German equivalents, most of whom have the name "Kuntz" printed on the back of their football shirts (except for one, who instead has "Klinsmann"). German player Stefan Kuntz had played an instrumental part in Germany's semi-final victory over England at Wembley in 1996, but his name is similar to the disparaging vulgarity "cunts"; the segment was often cut by broadcasters. Baddiel and Skinner had previously mocked Kuntz's name on their "Fantasy Football" television programme.


title: Three Lions

text: The video also featured cameo appearances from Geoff Hurst (who also made a cameo in the music video for the original song in 1996), John Regis, Robbie Williams and Chris Evans. The archival footage was also updated.


title: Three Lions

text: The final scene from the video when Frank Skinner dips his arm into custard while grasping a melon, so it bears a comical resemblance to the World Cup trophy, was shown on German public TV station Das Erste a few days before the final was to be played.


title: Three Lions

text: Although Frank Skinner had dismissed the possibility in early 2010, Skinner, Baddiel and Broudie were joined by Robbie Williams and comedian/actor Russell Brand under the name the Squad for a new version of the song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, produced by Trevor Horn. The song features added vocals from the ACM Gospel Choir, a soprano (Olivia Safe) and commentator John Motson. It entered the UK Singles Chart at number 21. The song can be found on "England The Album 2010'.


title: Three Lions

text: In summer 2022, the song was rewritten slightly as England hosted UEFA Women's Euro 2022 and the England women's team made the final against Germany, which they won 2–1 in extra time to win the Lionesses' first ever major trophy and England's first major trophy (men's or women's) since the 1966 World Cup. The Lightning Seeds and Baddiel performed the new version with Chelcee Grimes and retired Lionesses Fara Williams, Rachel Yankey, Faye White, Rachel Brown and Anita Asante at the Electric Ballroom in Camden with Skinner in attendance. This time, references were to current England women's players:


title: Three Lions

text: Two other verses were added: ""Now is the time, the Lionesses can shine…"" and ""Lionesses roar, a squad we can believe in / This England team has soared, no more need for dreaming.""


title: Three Lions

text: In October 2022, Skinner and Broudie confirmed that a new version of the song would be released in time for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The singer noted that the Lionesses' Euro 2022 win made him consider remaking the song, noting that the track might be Christmas-themed due to the World Cup's close proximity to Christmas.


title: Three Lions

text: On 18 November 2022, Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds released the song, titled "Three Lions (It's Coming Home for Christmas)". Skinner explained that they re-recorded it to take advantage of the "tacky" novelty of a Christmas-themed football song, stating that "in maths two negatives make a positive, so we think there's so much tacky in this that it's going to be a classic." The rewritten lyrics mention the England women's team winning the Women's Euros in July, updating the original's "30 years of hurt" to be "56 years of hurt, for the men's game" and adding "20 weeks of hurt, for the women's game, obviously", though the women's team had played several matches during those weeks and ended the year unbeaten. Baddiel and Skinner also make fun of the song itself, singing "a football Christmas song, not at all demeaning". Other lyrics include criticism of the choice to host in Qatar, though also the ironic suggestion that the men's team may be more successful playing in a different month, and the deliberate pronunciation of "Jules" (as in Jules Rimet Trophy) as the similar "Yule".


title: Three Lions

text: An accompanying music video was released, combining the original music video with modern footage. Baddiel and Skinner visit their past selves and prepare for Christmas. The archive footage of the original music video is replaced with footage of the women's team memorably interrupting a post-Euro final press conference to sing and dance to the original song, and of the men's team playing in the Euro 2020 Final and their reactions to losing. Geoff Hurst made a cameo like he had in the original, now dressed as Father Christmas and joined by female Euro-winning players Bethany England and Jess Carter.


title: Three Lions

text: "3 Lions '98" was re-released for the World Cup in 2002, and again on 5 June 2006 for the World Cup 2006 in Germany. It charted at number nine on the UK Singles Chart in 2006. The 2006 re-release was a DualDisc version with both the original version of "Three Lions" and "3 Lions '98" on the CD side and the music videos for the two songs on the DVD side. In 2021, Sony re-issued the two versions on a seven-inch vinyl as "3 Lions: Football's Coming Home - 25th Anniversary Edition", with "Three Lions" on one side listed as The First Half (rather than the A-side) and "3 Lions '98" on the other side, listed as The Second Half (rather than the B-side or double A-side).


title: Three Lions

text: In autumn of 1996, Labour opposition leader Tony Blair addressed his party's conference with the quote "Seventeen years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming, Labour's coming home", a play on words from the song's chorus and in reference to his confidence that Labour would return to power at the forthcoming general election, having been in the opposition since the Conservatives ousted them from government in 1979. When the election was held on 1 May 1997, Labour won by a landslide.


title: Three Lions

text: In summer 2018, the song enjoyed a renaissance due to the England national team's performance in the 2018 FIFA World Cup, in which they reached the semi-finals, and this caused the song to reach number one on the UK Singles Chart. After Croatia eliminated England in the World Cup semi-final, Croatia's captain Luka Modrić said that his team had taken the song's refrain as disrespect which had additionally motivated them to win the match. In response, England manager Gareth Southgate among others stated the Croats misunderstand English humour.


title: Aaron Staton

text: Aaron Staton (born August 10, 1980) is an American actor. He played Ken Cosgrove on the AMC drama series "Mad Men" (2007–2015) and voiced Cole Phelps in the video game "L.A. Noire" (2011), for which he was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Performer.


title: Aaron Staton

text: Staton grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. He met actress Connie Fletcher during their high school years while performing in community theater. They played husband and wife of each other's characters in "L.A. Noire".


title: Aaron Staton

text: Staton won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2008 and 2009 with the cast of "Mad Men". He has made appearances on shows such as "7th Heaven", "" and "Without a Trace". He performed extensive facial capture and voice acting for the video game "L.A. Noire", in which he plays protagonist Cole Phelps.


title: Vatanım Sensin

text: Vatanım Sensin (, alternatively known as Wounded Love in English) is a Turkish television drama set during the last years of Ottoman Empire and the Turkish War of Independence. The main character "Cevdet" is based on the life of Mustafa Mümin Aksoy, whose nickname was "Gavur Mümin". The first episode aired on October 26, 2016 on Kanal D. It stars Halit Ergenç and Bergüzar Korel.


title: Vatanım Sensin

text: The series begins with the Balkan Wars, after World War One and the death of Hasan Tahsin, who was the first to open fire on the Greek soldiers that landed at Izmir on May 15, 1919. The first season finished with the foundation of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on April 23, 1920.


title: Vatanım Sensin

text: The second season begins with the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920. The series finished with Liberation of İzmir by Turkish army on September 9, 1922.


title: Vatanım Sensin

text: Mira lay Cevdet, a major who served in Thessaloniki of the Ottoman Army towards the end of the Balkan War is a patriotic soldier. He is a passionate lover to his wife Azize, and a compassionate father to his children Ali Kemal, Yıldız and Hilal, and a good son to his mother, Hasibe Hanım. While in the army, he and his close friend Miralay Tevfik were resisting with all his might to not lose his homeland at the front, an event that happened to him will open a new page in his life, he will be forced to break away from the Cevdet family, and he will be forced to break away from the Thessaloniki Province. Tevfik will help Azize, who had to immigrate from Thessaloniki to Izmir. He is with them at the expense of revealing his hidden feelings towards Azize. However, Tevfik also has a big secret.


title: Vatanım Sensin

text: Azize, on the other hand, will find herself in a difficult struggle with her husband, three children and mother-in-law. After the incident that happened to his wife, whom he loved dearly, the Ankara Government will raise his children by struggling with the absence of Cevdet, who went to the Greek side as an agent in favour of Mustafa Kemal and his friends, and the difficulties of the war years. Yıldız is a beautiful girl with high eyes and Hilal is a patriotic and combative young girl.


title: Vatanım Sensin

text: Filming began in August 2016 on location in Istanbul, Izmir and the Aegean Region. Additionally, a set was built in Istanbul to recreate the coastal promenade of Izmir and the neighborhoods of the time. The filming of the first chapter lasted between 35 and 40 days.


title: Ancillary Justice

text: Ancillary Justice is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ann Leckie, published in 2013. It is Leckie's debut novel and the first in her Imperial Radch space opera trilogy, followed by "Ancillary Sword" (2014) and "Ancillary Mercy" (2015). The novel follows Breq—who is both the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery and the vessel of that ship's artificial consciousness—as she seeks revenge against the ruler of her civilization. The cover art is by John Harris.


title: Ancillary Justice

text: "Ancillary Justice" received critical praise and won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, BSFA Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Locus Award for Best First Novel. It is the only novel to have won the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards.


title: Ancillary Justice

text: Another novel, "Provenance" (2017), and two short stories, "Night's Slow Poison" and "She Commands Me and I Obey", are set in the same fictional universe.


title: Ancillary Justice

text: "Ancillary Justice" is a space opera set thousands of years in the future, where the principal power in human space is the expansionist Radch empire. The empire uses space ships controlled by AIs, who control human bodies ("ancillaries") to use as soldiers. The Radchaai do not distinguish people by gender, which Leckie conveys by using "she" pronouns for everybody, and by having the Radchaai main character guess, frequently incorrectly, when she has to use languages with gender-specific pronouns.


title: Ancillary Justice

text: The narrative begins nearly twenty years after the disappearance of a Radch starship, the "Justice of Toren", when the sole surviving ancillary (and a fragment of the "Justice of Toren"s consciousness), Breq, encounters an officer, Seivarden, who had been a lieutenant on the "Justice of Toren" 1,000 years earlier. The two are on an ice planet, and Seivarden is in precarious condition. The plot switches between two strands: Breq's "present-day" quest for justice for the "Justice of Toren"s destruction and flashbacks from 19 years earlier when the "Justice of Toren" was in orbit around the planet of Shis'urna, which was being formally brought into the Radchaai empire. The reader eventually finds out that the "Justice of Toren"s destruction was the result of a covert war between two opposed strands of consciousness of the Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, who uses multiple synchronized bodies to rule her far-flung empire. At the end of the novel, Breq associates herself with the more pacific aspect of Anaander Mianaai while waiting for an opportunity to exact her revenge.


title: Ancillary Justice

text: The novel received widespread acclaim and recognition, but also some criticism. Russell Letson's "Locus" review appreciated the ambitious structure of Leckie's novel, which interweaves several past and present strands of action in a manner reminiscent of Iain M. Banks's "Use of Weapons", and its engagement with the tropes of recent space opera as established by Banks, Ursula K. Le Guin, C. J. Cherryh and others. He concluded that "[t]his is not entry-level SF, and its payoff is correspondingly greater because of that."


title: Ancillary Justice

text: In the opinion of Genevieve Valentine, writing for NPR, the "assured, gripping and stylish" novel succeeded both on the large and on the small scale, as the tale of an empire and as a character study. Tor.com's Liz Bourke praised Leckie's worldbuilding and her writing as "clear and muscular, with a strong forward impetus, like the best of thriller writing", concluding that "Ancillary Justice" was "both an immensely fun novel, and a conceptually ambitious one".


title: Ancillary Justice

text: Nina Allan's review in "Arc" was more critical: while she found "nothing lazy, cynical or even particularly commercial-minded" in the novel, she criticized its characterization and considered that its uncritical adoption of space opera tropes and the "disappointingly simple" ideas it conveyed (such as that empires are evil) made "Ancillary Justice" "an SF novel of the old school: tireless in its recapitulation of genre norms and more or less impenetrable to outsiders".


title: Ancillary Justice

text: The novel was optioned for television in October 2014 by the production company Fabrik and Fox Television Studios. Leckie wrote that the producers responded positively to her concerns about how the ungendered, dark-skinned Radchaai characters could be presented in a visual medium.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The persecution of Muslims has been recorded throughout the history of Islam, beginning with its founding by Muhammad in the 7th century.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In the early days of Islam in Mecca, pre-Islamic Arabia, the new Muslims were often subjected to abuse and persecution by the Meccans (also called Mushrikun by Muslims), a polytheistic Arab tribal confederation. In the contemporary period, Muslims have faced religious restrictions in some countries. Various incidents of Islamophobia have also occurred, such as the Christchurch mosque shootings. Some global conflicts have seen religiously and/or politically motivated belligerents persecute the Muslim population of a region. Notable examples of such persecution have occurred in the Xinjiang conflict in China, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Yugoslav Wars, and many other conflicts.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: As part of the ongoing Rohingya conflict in Myanmar, the Rohingya genocide has resulted in over 25,000 deaths , the displacement of over 700,000 refugees, large-scale sexual violence committed against Rohingya women and girls, the burning of Rohingya homes and mosques, and many other human rights violations.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The ongoing Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang has led to the internment of more than one million Muslims (the majority of them being ethnic Uyghurs) in secret detention camps without any legal process. As a result, Muslim birth rates have plummeted in Xinjiang, falling by nearly 24 percent in 2019 alone, compared to just 4.2 percent in the rest of China.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In the early days of Islam in Mecca, the new Muslims were often subjected to abuse and persecution by the pagan Meccans (often called "Mushrikin": the unbelievers or polytheists). Some were killed, such as Sumayyah bint Khabbab, the seventh convert to Islam, who was allegedly tortured first by Amr ibn Hishām.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Even the Islamic prophet Muhammad was subjected to such abuse; while he was praying near the Kaaba, Uqba ibn Abu Mu'ayt threw the entrails of a sacrificed camel over him. Abu Lahab's wife Umm Jamil would regularly dump filth outside his door and placed thorns in the path to his house.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Accordingly, if free Muslims were attacked, slaves who converted were subjected to far worse. The master of the Ethiopian Bilal ibn Rabah (who would become the first muezzin) would take him out into the desert in the boiling heat of midday and place a heavy rock on his chest, demanding that he forswear his religion and pray to the polytheists' gods and goddesses, until Abu Bakr bought him and freed him.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II, with the stated goal of regaining control of the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims, who had captured them from the Byzantines in 638. The Fatimid Caliph, Al Hakim of Cairo, known as the "mad Caliph" destroyed the ancient and magnificent Constantinian-Era Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1009, as well as most other Christian churches and shrines in the Holy Land.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: This, in conjunction with the killing of Germanic pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem from Byzantium, raised the anger of Europe, and inspired Pope Urban II to call on all Catholic rulers, knights, and gentlemen to recapture the Holy Land from Muslim rule.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: It was also partly a response to the Investiture Controversy, which was the most significant conflict between secular and religious powers in medieval Europe. The controversy began as a dispute between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Gregorian Papacy and gave rise to the political concept of Christendom as a union of all peoples and sovereigns under the direction of the pope; as both sides tried to marshal public opinion in their favour, people became personally engaged in a dramatic religious controversy. Also of great significance in launching the crusade were the string of victories by the Seljuk Turks, which saw the end of Arab rule in Jerusalem.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 7 May 1099 the crusaders reached Jerusalem, which had been recaptured from the Seljuks by the Fatimids of Egypt only a year before. On 15 July, the crusaders were able to end the siege by breaking down sections of the walls and entering the city. Over the course of that afternoon, evening, and next morning, the crusaders killed almost every inhabitant of Jerusalem, Muslims and Jews alike. Although many Muslims sought shelter atop the Temple Mount inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the crusaders spared few lives. According to the anonymous "Gesta Francorum", in what some believe to be one of the most valuable contemporary sources of the First Crusade, "...the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles..." Tancred, Prince of Galilee claimed the Temple quarter for himself and offered protection to some of the Muslims there, but he was unable to prevent their deaths at the hands of his fellow crusaders. According to Fulcher of Chartres: "Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet coloured to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared."


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During the First Crusade and the massacre at Jerusalem, it has been reported that the Crusaders "[circled] the screaming, flame-tortured humanity singing 'Christ We Adore Thee!' with their Crusader crosses held high". Muslims were indiscriminately killed, and Jews who had taken refuge in their Synagogue were killed when it was burnt down by the Crusaders.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The island of Sicily was conquered by the Aghlabids in the 10th century after over a century of conflict, with the Byzantine Empire losing its final stronghold in 965. The Normans conquered the last Arab Muslim stronghold by 1091. Subsequently, taxes were imposed on the Muslim minority called the "jizya" (locally spelled "gisia") which was a continuation of the jizya imposed on non-Muslims in Sicily, by Muslim rulers in the 11th century, before the Norman conquest. Another tax on levied them for a time was the "augustale". Muslim rebellion broke out during the reign of Tancred as King of Sicily. Lombard pogroms against Muslims started in the 1160s. Muslim and Christian communities in Sicily became increasingly geographically separated. The island's Muslim communities were mainly isolated beyond an internal frontier which divided the south-western half of the island from the Christian north-east. Sicilian Muslims, a subject population, were dependent on royal protection. When King William the Good died in 1189, this royal protection was lifted, and the door was opened for widespread attacks against the island's Muslims. Toleration of Muslims ended with increasing Hohenstaufen control. Many oppressive measures, passed by Frederick II, were introduced in order to please the Popes who could not tolerate Islam being practised in Christendom: the result was in a rebellion of Sicily's Muslims. This triggered organized and systematic reprisals which marked the final chapter of Islam in Sicily. The rebellion abated, but direct papal pressure induced Frederick to mass transfer all his Muslim subjects deep into the Italian hinterland. In 1224, Frederick II expelled all Muslims from the island transferring many to Lucera ("Lugêrah", as it was known in Arabic) over the next two decades. In this controlled environment they could not challenge royal authority and they benefited the crown in taxes and military service. Their numbers eventually reached between 15,000 and 20,000, leading Lucera to be called "Lucaera Saracenorum" because it represented the last stronghold of Islamic presence in Italy. During peacetime, Muslims in Lucera were predominantly farmers. They grew durum wheat, barley, legumes, grapes, and other fruits. Muslims also kept bees for honey. The Muslim settlement of Lucera was destroyed by Charles II of Naples with backing from the papacy. The Muslims were either massacred, forcibly converted, enslaved, or exiled. Their abandoned mosques were demolished, and churches were usually built in their place. The Lucera Cathedral was built on the site of a mosque which was destroyed. The mosque was the last one still functioning in medieval Italy by that time. Some were exiled, with many finding asylum in Albania across the Adriatic Sea. Islam was no longer a major presence in the island by the 14th century.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Aghlabids also conquered the island of Malta at the same time during their invasion of Sicily. Per the Al-Himyari the island was reduced to an uninhabited ruin due to the conquest. The place was later converted into a settlement by Muslims. The Normans conquered it at the same time as Sicily. The Normans however did not interfere in the matters of Muslims of the island and gave them a tributary status. Their conquest however led to the Christianization and Latinization of the island. An annual fine on the Christian community for killing of a Muslim was also repealed in the 12th century, signifying the degradation of the protection given to the Muslims. Most of the Maltese Muslims were deported by 1271. All Maltese Muslims had converted to Christianity by the end of the 15th century and had to find ways to disguise their previous identities by Latinizing or adopting new surnames.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Genghis Khan, and the later Yuan Emperors of China imposed restrictive decrees which forbade Islamic practices like halal butchering and forced Muslims to follow Mongol methods of butchering animals. As a result of these decrees, Muslims were forced to slaughter sheep in secret. Genghis Khan referred to Muslims as "slaves", and he also commanded them to follow the Mongol method of eating rather than the halal one. Circumcision was also forbidden. Toward the end of their rule, the corruption of the Mongol court and the persecution of Muslims became so severe that Muslim generals joined Han Chinese in rebelling against the Mongols. The Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang employed Muslim generals like Lan Yu who rebelled against the Mongols and defeated them in combat. Some Muslim communities were named "kamsia", which, in Hokkien Chinese, means "thank you"; many Hui Muslims claim that their communities were named "kamsia" because the Han Chinese appreciated the important role which they had played in assisting them to overthrow the Mongols. The Muslims in the Semu class also revolted against the Yuan dynasty in the Ispah Rebellion but the rebellion was crushed and the Muslims were massacred by the Yuan loyalist commander Chen Youding.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Following the brutal Mongol invasion of Central Asia under Genghis Khan, and the sack of Baghdad which occurred in 1258, the Mongol Empire's rule extended across most Muslim lands in Asia. The Abbasid caliphate was destroyed and the Islamic civilization suffered much devastation, especially in Mesopotamia, and Tengriism and Buddhism replaced it as the official religions of the empire. However, the Mongols attacked people for goods and riches, not because of their religion. Later, many Mongol khans and rulers such as those of the Oljeitu, the Ilkhanid, and the Golden Horde became Muslims along with their subjects. The Mongols made no real effort to replace Islam with any other religion, they just had the desire to plunder goods from anyone who did not submit to their rule, which was characteristic of Mongol warfare. During the Yuan Dynasty which the Mongols founded in China, Muslim scientists were highly regarded and Muslim beliefs were also respected. Regarding the Mongol attacks, the Muslim historian, ibn al-Athir lamented:


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: I shrank from giving a recital of these events on the account of their magnitude and abhorrence. Even now I come reluctant to the task, for who would deem it a light thing to sing the death song of Islam and the Muslims or find it easy to tell this tale? O that my mother had not given me birth!


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: At the intervention of Hulagu's Nestorian Christian wife, Dokuz Khatun, the city's Christian inhabitants were spared. Hulagu offered the royal palace to the Nestorian Catholicos Mar Makikha, and he also ordered that a cathedral should be built for him. Ultimately, the seventh ruler of the Ilkhanate, Mahmud Ghazan, converted from Tengrism to Islam, and thus began the gradual decline of Tengrism and Buddhism in the region and its replacement by the renaissance of Islam. Later, three of the four principal Mongol khanates embraced Islam.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Arabs relying largely on Berbers conquered the Iberian Peninsula starting in 711, subduing the whole Visigothic Kingdom by 725. The triumphant Umayyads got conditional capitulations probably in most of the towns, so that they could get a compromise with the native population. This was not always so. For example, Mérida, Cordova, Toledo, or Narbonne were conquered by storm or after laying siege on them. The arrangement reached with the locals was based on respecting the laws and traditions used in each place, so that the "Goths" (a legal concept, not an ethnic one, i.e. the communities ruled by the "Forum Iudicum") continued to be ruled on new conditions by their own tribunals and laws. The Gothic Church remained in place and collaborated with the new masters. Al-Andalus or Muslim ruled Iberian peninsula, was conquered by northern Christian kingdoms in 1492, as a result of their expansion taking place especially after the definite collapse of the Caliphate of Cordova in 1031.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The coming of the Crusades (starting with the massacre of Barbastro) and similarly entrenched positions on the northern African Almoravids, who took over al-Andalus as of 1086, added to the difficult coexistence between communities, including Muslims in Christian ruled territory, or the Mozarabic rite Christians (quite different from those of the northern kingdoms), and further minority groups. The Almohads, a fanatic north African sect who later occupied al-Andalus, were the only Iberian Muslim rulers to demand conversion, exile, or death from the Christians and Jews.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During the expansion south of the northern Christian kingdoms, depending on the local capitulations, local Muslims were allowed to remain (Mudéjars) with extreme restrictions, while some were forcefully converted to the Christian faith. After the conquest of Granada, all the Spanish Muslims were under Christian rule. The new acquired population spoke Arabic or Mozarabic, and the campaigns to convert them were unsuccessful. Legislation was gradually introduced to remove Islam, culminating with the Muslims being forced to convert to Catholicism by the Spanish Inquisition. They were known as Moriscos and considered New Christians. Further laws were introduced, as on 25 May 1566, stipulating that they 'had to abandon the use of Arabic, change their costumes, that their doors must remain open every Friday, and other feast days, and that their baths, public and private, to be torn down.' The reason doors were to be left open so as to determine whether they secretly observed any Islamic festivals. King Philip II of Spain ordered the destruction of all public baths on the grounds of them being relics of infidelity, notorious for their use by Muslims performing their purification rites. The possession of books or papers in Arabic was near concrete proof of disobedience with severe reprisals and penalties. On 1 January 1568, Christian priests were ordered to take all Morisco children between the ages of three and fifteen, and place them in schools, where they were forced to learn Castillian and Christian doctrine. All these laws and measures required force to be implemented, and from much earlier.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Between 1609 and 1614 the Moriscos were expelled from Spain. They were to depart 'under the pain of death and confiscation, without trial or sentence ... to take with them no money, bullion, jewels, or bills of exchange ... just what they could carry.'


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Lipka Tatars, also known as Polish Tatars or Lithuanian Tatars, were a community of Tatar Muslims who migrated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and became Polonized.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth led to persecution of Muslims, Jews, and Orthodox Christians. The ways the Muslims were persecuted included banning the repair of old mosques and preventing new ones from being constructed, banning serfdom of Christians under Muslims, banning marriage of Christian females to Muslims, putting limitations on property ownership among Tatars and the Polish–Ottoman Wars fed into the discriminatory atmosphere against them and led to anti-Islamic writings and attacks.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Following the Sikh occupation of Samana in 1709, the Sikh army participated in a massacre of the city's residents. Ten thousand unarmed Muslim men and women were slain. Following the Siege of Sirhind, Banda Singh Bahadur ordered that all men, women, and children should be executed. All of the residents of Sirhind, regardless of whether they were men, women, or children were burned alive or slain. In December 1757, Sikhs pillaged the Doab and the city of Jullunder. During this pillaging, "Children were put to the sword, women were dragged out and forcibly converted to Sikhism", and Mosques were defiled with pigs' blood. The body of Nassir Ali was dug out by Sikhs and flesh was thrust into it.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Sikh forces commanded by Ranjit Singh captured Peshawar and pillaged the city, cutting down the trees for which the city was famous, burning the palace of Bala Hissar and defiling the city's mosques. Misr Diwan Chand became the first Hindu governor of Kashmir under Singh and enacted dozens of anti-Muslim laws. He raised the tax levels of Muslim subjects, demolished the Jamia Masjid of Srinagar and prohibited cow slaughter. The punishment for cow slaughter was the death penalty without any exception. Shah Shujah Durrani, the grandson of Ahmad Shah Durrani, wanted to implement similar anti-cow slaughter policies in the Emirate of Afghanistan and with help from Singh and the East India Company regained the Afghan throne and imposed a ban on cow slaughter in Kabul.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Sayyid Ahmed Barelvi declared war against Maharaja Ranjit Singh and recruited many Muslims from madrassas. However the Yousufzai and Muhammadzai Khawaneen did not like his egalitarian ideals and betrayed Sayyid Ahmed Shahid and his army at the battle of Balakot and supported the Sikh Army in the Battle of Balakote in 1831, and Barelvi's head was severed by the Sikh General Hari Singh Nalwa.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Muslims still revered Sayyid Ahmed, however he was defeated and killed in the battle by Sikh Army which was commanded by Hari Singh Nalwa and Gulab Singh. Raja Aggar Khan of Rajouri was defeated, humiliated by the Sikh Army commander Gulab Singh and was brought to Lahore where he was beheaded by Gulab Singh of Jammu. Raja Sultan Khan of Bhimber also met the same fate when he was defeated and captured by the Dogra ruler Gulab Singh and brought to Jammu where he was imprisoned. Raja Sultan Khan later died in prison.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Armenians and Greek armies attacked many Muslims (both Turkish and Kurdish) were killed by Russians and Armenians in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire (including Bayburt, Bitlis, Erzincan, Erzurum, Kars, and Muş).


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 14 May 1919, the Greek army landed in Izmir (Smyrna), which marked the beginning of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). During the war, the Greek side committed a number of atrocities in western provinces (such as Izmir, Manisa, and Uşak), the local Muslim population was subjected to massacre, ravaging and rape. Johannes Kolmodin was a Swedish orientalist in Izmir. He wrote in his letters that the Greek army had burned 250 Turkish villages.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In 1905 and 1918, thousands of Muslims in Azerbaijan were massacred by Armenian Dashnaks and Bolsheviks.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During the first Karabakh war in the 1990s, thousands of Azerbaijani Muslims were massacred and their towns depopulated by Armenian forces. Hundreds of civilians were subject to massacre such as in Khojaly and Karadaghly settlements.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Half a million Muslims succeeded in reaching Ottoman controlled lands and 672,215 of them were reported to have remained after the war. Approximately a quarter of a million of them perished as a result of massacres, cold, disease, and other harsh conditions.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: According to Aubaret, the French Consul in Ruse in 1876, in the Danube Vilayet which also included Northern Dobruja in today's Romania, as well as a substantial portion of territory in today's southern Serbia, there were 1,120,000 Muslims and 1,233,500 non-Muslims of whom 1,150,000 were Bulgarian. Between 1876 and 1878, through massacres, epidemics, hunger, and war, a large portion of the Turkish population vanished.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Cham Muslims experienced serious purges in which as much as half of their community's entire population was exterminated by authoritarian communists in Cambodia during the 1970s as part of the Cambodian genocide. About half a million Muslims were killed. According to Cham sources, 132 mosques were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge regime. Only 20 of the 113 most prominent Cham clerics in Cambodia survived the rule of the Khmer Rouge.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Dungan revolt erupted due to infighting between Muslim Sufi sects, the Khafiya and the Jahariyya, and the Gedimu. When the rebellion failed, mass-immigration of the Dungan people into Imperial Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan ensued. Before the war, the population of Shaanxi province totalled approximately 13 million inhabitants, at least 1,750,000 of whom were Dungan (Hui). After the war, the population dropped to 7 million; at least 150,000 fled. But once-flourishing Chinese Muslim communities fell 93% in the revolt in Shaanxi province. Between 1648 and 1878, around twelve million Hui and Han Chinese were killed in ten unsuccessful uprisings.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Ush Rebellion in 1765 by Uyghur Muslims against the Manchus of the Qing dynasty occurred after Uyghur women were gang raped by the servants and son of Manchu official Su-cheng. It was said that "Ush Muslims had long wanted to sleep on [Sucheng and son's] hides and eat their flesh." because of the rape of Uyghur Muslim women for months by the Manchu official Sucheng and his son. The Manchu Emperor ordered that the Uyghur rebel town be massacred, the Qing forces enslaved all the Uyghur children and women and slaughtered the Uyghur men. Manchu soldiers and Manchu officials regularly having sex with or raping Uyghur women caused massive hatred and anger by Uyghur Muslims to Manchu rule. The invasion by Jahangir Khoja was preceded by another Manchu official, Binjing who raped a Muslim daughter of the Kokan aqsaqal from 1818 to 1820. The Qing sought to cover up the rape of Uyghur women by Manchus to prevent anger against their rule from spreading among the Uyghurs.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Manchu official Shuxing'a started an anti-Muslim massacre which led to the Panthay Rebellion. Shuxing'a developed a deep hatred of Muslims after an incident where he was stripped naked and nearly lynched by a mob of Muslims. He ordered several Hui Muslim rebels to be slowly sliced to death.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The revolts were harshly suppressed by the Manchu government in a manner that amounts to genocide. Approximately a million people in the Panthay Rebellion were killed, and several million in the Dungan revolt as a "washing off the Muslims"(洗回 (xi Hui)) policy had been long advocated by officials in the Manchu government. Many Muslim generals like Ma Zhanao, Ma Anliang, Ma Qianling, Dong Fuxiang, Ma Haiyan, and Ma Julung helped the Qing dynasty defeat the rebel Muslims, and were rewarded, and their followers were spared from the genocide. The Han Chinese Qing general Zuo Zongtang even relocated the Han from the suburbs Hezhou when the Muslims there surrendered as a reward so that Hezhou (now Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture) is still heavily Muslim to this day and is the most important city for Hui Muslims in China. The Muslims were granted amnesty and allowed to live as long as they stayed outside the city. Some of the Muslims who fought, like General Dong, did not do it because they were Muslim, rather, like many other generals, they gathered bands of followers and fought at will.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Zuo Zongtang generally massacred New Teaching Jahriyya rebels, even if they surrendered, but spared Old Teaching Khafiya and Sunni Gedimu rebels. Ma Hualong belonged to the New Teaching school of thought, and Zuo executed him, while Hui generals belonging to the Old Teaching clique such as Ma Qianling, Ma Zhan'ao, and Ma Anliang were granted amnesty and even promoted in the Qing military. Moreover, an army of Han Chinese rebels led by Dong Fuxiang surrendered and joined Zuo Zongtang.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: General Zuo accepted the surrender of Hui people belonging to the Old Teaching school, provided they surrendered large amounts of military equipment and supplies, and accepted relocation. He refused to accept the surrender of New Teaching Muslims who still believed in its tenets, since the Qing classified them as a dangerous heterodox cult, similar to the White Lotus Buddhists.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Qing authorities decreed that the Hui rebels who had taken part in violent attacks were merely heretics and not representative of the entire Hui population, just as the heretical White Lotus did not represent all Buddhists. Qing authorities decreed that there were two different Muslim sects, the "old" religion and "new" religion. The new were heretics and deviated from Islam in the same way that the White Lotus deviated from Buddhism and Daoism, and stated its intention to inform the Hui community that it was aware that the original Islamic religion was one united sect before the advent of new "heretics", saying they would separate Muslim rebels by which sect they belonged to. Zuo also stated that he would accept the surrender of New Teaching Muslims who admitted that they were deceived, radicalized, and misled by its doctrines. Zuo excluded khalifas and mullas from the surrender.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During the Cultural Revolution, mosques along with other religious buildings were often defaced, destroyed, or closed and copies of the Quran were destroyed and cemeteries by the Red Guards. During that time, the government also constantly accused Muslims and other religious groups of holding "superstitious beliefs" and promoting "anti-socialist trends". The government began to relax its policies toward Muslims in 1978, and supported worship and rituals. Today, Islam is experiencing a modest revival and there are now many mosques in China. There has been an upsurge in Islamic expression and many nationwide Islamic associations have been organized to co-ordinate inter-ethnic activities among Muslims.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: However, restrictions have been imposed on Uyghur Islamic practices because the Chinese government has attempted to link Islamic beliefs with terrorist activities since 2001. Numerous events have led the Chinese government to crack down on most displays of Islamic piety among Uyghurs, including the wearing of veils and long beards. The Ghulja Incident and the July 2009 Ürümqi riots were both caused by abusive treatment of Uyghur Muslims within Chinese society, and they resulted in even more extreme government crackdowns. While Hui Muslims are seen as being relatively docile, Uyghurs are stereotyped as Islamists and punished more severely for crimes than Hui are. In 1989, China's government banned a book which was titled "Xing Fengsu" ("Sexual Customs") and placed its authors under arrest after Uyghurs and Hui Muslims protested against its publication in Lanzhou and Beijing because it insulted Islam. Hui Muslims who vandalized property during the protests against the book's publication were not punished but Uyghur protestors were imprisoned.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The pacification of Libya resulted in mass deaths of the indigenous people in Cyrenaica – one-quarter of Cyrenaica's population of 225,000 people died during the conflict in Italian Libya between Italian military forces and indigenous rebels associated with the Senussi Order that lasted from 1923 until 1932, when the principal Senussi leader, Omar Mukhtar, was captured and executed. Italy committed major war crimes during the conflict; including the use of chemical weapons, episodes of refusing to take prisoners of war and instead executing surrendering combatants, and mass executions of civilians. Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica, from their settlements that were slated to be given to Italian settlers.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Some governments and scholars have called the French conquest of Algeria a genocide. Ben Kiernan, an Australian expert on the Cambodian genocide, wrote in "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur" on the French conquest of Algeria:


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: By 1875, the French conquest was complete. The war had killed approximately 825,000 indigenous Algerians since 1830. A long shadow of genocidal hatred persisted, provoking a French author to protest in 1882 that in Algeria, "we hear it repeated every day that we must expel the native and if necessary destroy him." As a French statistical journal urged five years later, "the system of extermination must give way to a policy of penetration."


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: French Algeria became the prototype for a pattern of French colonial rule which has been described as "quasi-apartheid". Napoleon III oversaw an 1865 decree that allowed Arab and Berber Algerians to request French citizenship – but only if they "renounced their Muslim religion and culture": by 1913, only 1,557 Muslims had been granted French citizenship. Despite periodic attempts at partial reform, the situation of the "Code de l'indigénat" persisted until the French Fourth Republic, which began in 1946, but although Muslim Algerians were accorded the rights of citizenship, the system of discrimination was maintained in more informal ways. This "internal system of apartheid" met with considerable resistance from the Muslims affected by it, and is cited as one of the causes of the 1954 insurrection.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In response to France's recognition of Armenian genocide, Turkey accused France of committing genocide against 15% of Algeria's population.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Imperial Japanese forces slaughtered, raped, and tortured Rohingya Muslims in a massacre in 1942 and expelled hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into Bengal in British India. The Japanese committed countless acts of rape, murder, and torture against thousands of Rohingyas. During this period, some 220,000 Rohingyas are believed to have crossed the border into Bengal, then part of British India, to escape the violence. Defeated, 40,000 Rohingyas eventually fled to Chittagong after repeated massacres by the Burmese and Japanese forces.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Japanese forces also carried out massacres, torture, and atrocities on Muslim Moro people in Mindanao, and Sulu. A former Japanese Imperial Navy medic, Akira Makino, admitted to carrying out dissections on Moro civilians while they were still alive.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Panglong, a Chinese Muslim town in British Burma, was entirely destroyed by the Japanese invaders in the Japanese invasion of Burma. The Hui Muslim Ma Guanggui became the leader of the Hui Panglong self-defense guard created by Su who was sent by the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China to fight against the Japanese invasion of Panglong in 1942. The Japanese destroyed Panglong, burning it and driving out the over 200 Hui households out as refugees. Yunnan and Kokang received Hui refugees from Panglong driven out by the Japanese. One of Ma Guanggui's nephews was Ma Yeye, a son of Ma Guanghua and he narrated the history of Panglang including the Japanese attack. An account of the Japanese attack on the Hui in Panglong was written and published in 1998 by a Hui from Panglong called "Panglong Booklet". The Japanese attack in Burma caused the Hui Mu family to seek refuge in Panglong but they were driven out again to Yunnan from Panglong when the Japanese attacked Panglong.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During the Second Sino-Japanese war the Japanese followed what has been referred to as a "killing policy" and destroyed many mosques. According to Wan Lei, "Statistics showed that the Japanese destroyed 220 mosques and killed countless Hui people by April 1941." After the Rape of Nanking mosques in Nanjing were found to be filled with dead bodies. They also followed a policy of economic oppression which involved the destruction of mosques and Hui communities and made many Hui jobless and homeless. Another policy was one of deliberate humiliation. This included soldiers smearing mosques with pork fat, forcing Hui to butcher pigs to feed the soldiers, and forcing girls to supposedly train as geishas and singers but in fact made them serve as sex slaves. Hui cemeteries were destroyed for military reasons. Many Hui fought in the war against Japan.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the slaughter of between 762 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, by a Lebanese Christian militia in the Sabra neighbourhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon from approximately 6:00 pm 16 September to 8:00 am 18 September 1982.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Myanmar has a Buddhist majority. The Muslim minority in Myanmar mostly consists of the Rohingya people and the descendants of Muslim immigrants from India (including the modern-day nations of Bangladesh) and China (the ancestors of Chinese Muslims in Myanmar came from Yunnan province), as well as the descendants of earlier Arab and Persian settlers. Indian Muslims were brought to Burma by the British in order to aid them in clerical work and business. After independence, many Muslims retained their previous positions and achieved prominence in business and politics.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: At first, the Buddhist persecution of Muslims arose for religious reasons, and it occurred during the reign of King Bayinnaung, 1550–1589 AD. He also disallowed the Eid al-Adha, the religious sacrifice of cattle, regarding the killing of animals in the name of religion as a cruel custom. Halal food was also forbidden by King Alaungpaya in the 18th century.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: When General Ne Win swept to power on a wave of nationalism in 1962, the status of Muslims changed for the worse. Muslims were expelled from the army and rapidly marginalized. Many Rohingya Muslims fled Burma as refugees and inundated neighbouring Bangladesh including 200,000 who fled Burma in 1978 as a result of the King Dragon operation in Arakan and 250,000 in 1991.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: A widely publicized Burmese conflict was the 2012 Rakhine State riots, a series of clashes that primarily involved the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist people and the Rohingya Muslim people in the northern Rakhine State – an estimated 90,000 people were displaced as a result of the riots.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was accused of failing to protect Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims during the 2016–17 persecution. State crime experts from Queen Mary University of London warned that Suu Kyi is "legitimising genocide" in Myanmar.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Nazi ideology's racial theories considered ethnic groups which were associated with Islam to be "racially inferior", particularly Arabs.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During the Invasion of France, thousands of Muslims, both Arabs and sub-Saharan Africans, who were serving in French colonial units were captured by the Germans. Massacres of these men were widespread, the most notable of these massacres was committed against Moroccans by Waffen-SS troops during the fighting which occurred around Cambrai, the Moroccans were killed in mass after they were driven from the outskirts of the city and surrendered. In Erquinvillers, another major massacre was committed against captured Muslim Senegalese troops by Wehrmacht and Waffen SS troops.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During Operation Barbarossa, the Einsatzgruppen engaged in the mass execution of over 140,000 Soviet POWs, many of whom were killed because they had "Asiatic features". Civilian Muslim men were often mistaken for Jews and killed due to the fact that they had previously been circumsized. In 1942 in Amersfoort in the Netherlands, 101 Soviet Uzbek Muslim soldiers were massacred by Nazi Germans after they were forced into a concentration camp and displayed to the local Dutch people as proof the Soviets were made out of "untermenschen".


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Philippines is a predominantly Christian society with a complicated history of relations between Islam and Christianity. Despite historic evidence of Islamization spreading throughout the islands in the 13th–16th centuries, the archipelago came under Spanish rule in the 16th century. The Spanish proselytized many natives, and labelled those who remained Muslims as "Moro", a derogatory term recalling the Moors, an Islamic people of North Africa who occupied parts of Spain for several centuries. Today, this term "Moro" is used to refer to the indigenous Muslim tribes and ethnic groups of the country. When the Spanish came to the Philippine islands, most of the natives in Luzon and Visayas were pagans with Muslim minorities, and while Spanish proselytized many natives, many Muslims in Luzon and Visayas were not exempted by the Spaniards from the Spanish Inquisition, wherein Muslims to become Catholics or else die for their faith. Those who remained Muslims are only the natives of Mindanao and Sulu which the Spaniards failed to subjugate, or had control of only briefly and partially.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Spanish–Moro Wars between Spanish colonial authorities and the indigenous Sultanates of the Moro peoples (the Sultanate of Sulu, confederation of sultanates in Lanao and Sultanate of Maguindanao) further escalated tensions between the Christian and Muslim groups of the country. The Moros fought in the Moro Rebellion against the Americans during which Americans massacred Moro women and children at the Moro Crater massacre, against the Japanese in World War II, and are waging an insurgency against the Philippines.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The pro-Philippine government Ilaga militia, composed of Catholic and other Christian settlers on Moro land in Mindanao, were known for their atrocities and massacres against Moro civilians. The Ilaga's bloodiest attack happened in June 1971 when they slaughtered 65 Moro civilians in a Mosque during the Manili massacre. On 24 September 1974, in the Malisbong massacre, the Armed Forces of the Philippines slaughtered about 1,500 Moro Muslim civilians who were praying in a Mosque, in addition to Moro girls who had been taken aboard a boat.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Polls have shown that some non-Muslim Filipinos hold negative views directed against the Moro people.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The period from the conquest of Kazan in 1552 to the ascension of Catherine the Great in 1762, was marked by systematic repression of Muslims through policies of exclusion and discrimination as well as the destruction of Muslim culture by elimination of outward manifestations of Islam such as mosques. The first wave of persecution and forced conversions of Muslims to Christianity occurred soon after the Russian conquest of the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Another period of intense mosque destruction and anti-Muslim oppression from the Russian authorities occurred during the 18th century. During the reign of Anna of Russia, many Muslims were forced or pressured to convert. New converts were exempted from paying taxes, were granted certain privileges, and were given better resources for the learning of their new faith. Many continued to secretly practice Islam and were crypto-Muslims.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Russians initially demonstrated a willingness in allowing Islam to flourish as Muslim clerics were invited into the various region to preach to the Muslims, particularly the Kazakhs whom the Russians viewed as "savages" and "ignorant" of morals and ethics. However, Russian policy shifted toward weakening Islam by introducing pre-Islamic elements of collective consciousness. Such attempts included methods of eulogizing pre-Islamic historical figures and imposing a sense of inferiority by sending Kazakhs to highly elite Russian military institutions. In response, Kazakh religious leaders attempted to bring religious fervor by espousing pan-Turkism, though many were persecuted as a result.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: While total expulsion as in other Christian nations such as Spain, Portugal, and Sicily was not feasible to achieve a homogeneous Russian Orthodox population, other policies such as land grants and the promotion of migration by other Russian and non-Muslim populations into Muslim lands displaced many Muslims making them minorities in places such as some parts of the South Ural region to other parts such as the Ottoman Turkey, and almost annihilating the Circassians, Crimean Tatars, and various Muslims of the Caucasus. The Russian army rounded up people, driving Muslims from their villages to ports on the Black Sea, where they awaited ships provided by the neighbouring Ottoman Empire. The explicit Russian goal was to expel the groups in question from their lands. They were given a choice as to where to be resettled: in the Ottoman Empire or in Russia far from their old lands. Only a small percentage (the numbers are unknown) accepted resettlement within the Russian Empire. The trend of Russification has continued at different paces during the remaining Tsarist period and under the Soviet Union, so that today there are more Tatars living outside the Republic of Tatarstan than inside it.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Alexander Suvorov announced the capture of Ismail in 1791 to the Tsarina Catherine in a doggerel couplet, after the assault had been pressed from house to house, room to room, and nearly every Muslim man, woman, and child in the city had been killed in three days of uncontrolled massacre, 40,000 Turks dead, a few hundred taken into captivity. For all his bluffness, Suvorov later told an English traveller that when the massacre was over he went back to his tent and wept.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During the Circassian genocide, German general Grigory Zass in the Russian army sent the severed Circassian heads to his fellow Germans in Berlin who were professors and used them to study anatomy. The Decembrist said that Zass cleaned and boiled the flesh off the heads after storing them under his bed in his tent. He also had Circassian heads outside of his tent impaled on lances on a hill. Circassian men's corpses were decapitated by Russian-Cossack women on the battlefield after the battles were over for the heads to be sent to Zass for collection. Zass erected Circassian heads on poles outside of his tent and witnesses saw the wind blowing the beards of the heads. Russian soldiers and Cossacks were paid for sending Circassian heads to General Zass. Besides cutting Circassian heads off and collecting them, Zass employed a deliberate strategy of annihilating Circassian en masse, burning entire Circassian villages with the people in it and encouraging violation of Circassian women and children. Zass' forces referred to all Circassian elderly, children women, and men as "Bandits, "plunderers", or "thieves" and the Russian empire's forces were commanded by ferociously partholofical officers who commanded political dissidents and criminals. Cossacks raped Circassian women and impregnated them with children. Circassian children were scared of Zass and he was called the devil (Iblis) by the Circassians.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Russians raped Circassian girls during the 1877 Russo-Turkish war from the Circassian refugees who were settled in the Ottoman Balkans. Circassian girls were sold into Turkish harems by their relatives. Circassians also raped and murdered Bulgarians during the 1877 Russo-Turkish war. Circassian women in the Balkans were raped by Russian soldiers in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Zass worked with another German officer in the Russian army named Georg Andreas von Rosen during the genocide against the Circassians. Zass wrote letters to Rosen proudly admitting he ordered Cossacks to slaughter Circassian civilians. Russia was ruled by Tsars from the German House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov and military officer ranks were filled with Germans from the Baltic German nobility.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Soviet Union was hostile to all forms of religion, which was "the opium of the masses" in accordance with Marxist ideology. Relative religious freedom existed for Muslims in the years following the revolution, but in the late 1920s the Soviet government took a strong anti-religious turn. Many mosques were closed or torn down. During the period of Joseph Stalin's leadership, Crimean Tatar, Chechen, Ingush, Balkar, Karachay, and Meskhetian Turk Muslims were victims of mass deportation. Though it principally targeted ethno-religious minorities, the deportations were officially based on alleged collaborationism during the Nazi occupation of Crimea. The deportation began on 17 May 1944 in all Crimean inhabited localities. More than 32,000 NKVD troops participated in this action. 193,865 Crimean Tatars were deported, 151,136 of them to Uzbek SSR, 8,597 to Mari ASSR, 4,286 to Kazakh SSR, the rest 29,846 to the various oblasts of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: From May to November, 10,105 Crimean Tatars died of starvation in Uzbekistan (7% of deported to Uzbek SSR). Nearly 30,000 (20%) died in exile during the year and a half by the NKVD data and nearly 46% by the data of the Crimean Tatar activists. According to Soviet dissident information, many Crimean Tatars were made to work in the large-scale projects conducted by the Soviet Gulag system of slave labour camps.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: As the Ottoman Empire entered a permanent phase of decline in the late 17th century it was engaged in a protracted state of conflict, losing territories both in Europe and the Caucasus. The victors were the Christian States, the old Habsburg and Romanov Empires, and the new nation-states of Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Rival European powers encouraged the development of nationalist ideologies among the Ottoman subjects in which the Muslims were portrayed as an ethnic "fifth column" left over from a previous era that could not be integrated into the planned future states. The struggle to rid themselves of Ottomans became an important element of the self-identification of the Balkan Christians.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: According to Mark Levene, the Victorian public in the 1870s paid much more attention to the massacres and expulsions of Christians than to massacres and expulsions of Muslims, even if on a greater scale. He further suggests that such massacres were even favoured by some circles. Mark Levene also argues that the dominant powers, by supporting "nation-statism" at the Congress of Berlin, legitimized "the primary instrument of Balkan nation-building": ethnic cleansing. Hall points out that atrocities were committed by all sides during the Balkan conflicts. Deliberate terror was designed to instigate population movements out of particular territories. The aim of targeting the civilian population was to carve ethnically homogeneous countries.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Muslim Albanians, along smaller numbers of urban Turks (some with Albanian heritage), were expelled by the Serb army from most parts of the Sanjak of Niş and fled to the Kosovo Vilayet during and after the Serbian–Ottoman War (1876–78). An estimated 60–70,000 to as low as 30,000 Albanians were either expelled, fled and/or retreated from the captured areas seeking refuge in Ottoman Kosovo. The departure of the Albanian population from these regions was done in a manner that today would be characterized as ethnic cleansing.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Justin McCarty estimates that between 1821 and 1922 around five and a half million Muslims were driven out of Europe and five million more were killed or died of disease and starvation while fleeing. Cleansing occurred as a result of the Serbian and Greek independence in the 1820s and 1830s, the Russo-Turkish War 1877–1878, and culminating in the Balkan Wars 1912–1913. Mann describes these acts as "murderous ethnic cleansing on stupendous scale not previously seen in Europe" referring to the 1914 Carnegie Endowment report. It is estimated that at the turn of the 20th century there were 4,4 million Muslims living in the Balkan regions under Ottoman control. More than one million Muslims left the Balkans in the last three decades of the 19th century. Between 1912 and 1926 nearly 2.9 million Muslims were either killed or forced to emigrate to Turkey.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Between 10,000 and 30,000 Turks were killed in Tripolitsa by Greek rebels in the summer of 1821, including the entire Jewish population of the city. Similar events as these occurred elsewhere during the Greek Revolution resulting in the eradication and expulsion of virtually the entire Turkish population of the Morea. These acts ensured the ethnic homogenization of the area under the rule of the future modern Greek state. According to claims by Turkish delegations, in 1878 the Muslim inhabitants in Thessaly are estimated to be 150,000 and in 1897 the Muslims numbered 50,000 in Crete. By 1919 there were virtually no Muslims left in Thessaly and only 20,000 in Crete.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In the Bulgarian insurgency of the April Uprising in 1876 an estimate of 1,000 Muslims were killed. During the Russo-Turkish War large numbers of Turks were either killed, perished, or became refugees. There are different estimates about the casualties of the war. Crampton describes an exodus of 130,000–150,000 expelled of which approximately half returned for an intermediary period encouraged by the Congress of Berlin. Hupchick and McCarthy point out that 260,000 perished and 500,000 became refugees. The Turkish scholars Karpat and Ipek argue that up to 300,000 were killed and 1–1.5 million were forced to emigrate. Members of the European press who covered the war in Bulgaria reported on the Russian atrocities against Muslims. Witness accounts from Schumla and Razgrad describe children, women, and elderly wounded by sabres and lances. They stated that the entire Muslim population of many villages had been massacred. Recently uncovered photographs in the archive of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the Russo-Turkish War 1877–1878 show the massacre of Muslims by the Russians in the region of Stara Zagora claiming to have affected some 20,000 Muslim civilians.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Massacres against Turks and Muslims during the Balkan Wars in the hands of Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians are described in detail in the 1912 Carnegie Endowment report. The Bulgarian violence during the Balkan War included burning of villages, transforming mosques into churches, rape of women, and mutilation of bodies. It is estimated that 220,000 Pomaks were forcefully Christianized and forbidden to wear Islamic religious clothing.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During World War II, the Chetniks, a Yugoslav Royalist and Serbian nationalist movement, committed numerous war crimes primarily directed against the non-Serb population of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia explicitly ordering the ethnic cleansing, mainly 29,000–33,000 Muslims were killed.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan was a period of mass starvation and drought that took place in the Tatar ASSR as a result of war communism policy, in which 500,000 to 2,000,000 peasants died. The event was part of the greater Russian famine of 1921–1922 that affected other parts of the USSR, in which up 5,000,000 people died in total. According to Roman Serbyn, a professor of Russian and East European history, the Tatarstan famine was the first man-made famine in the Soviet Union and systematically targeted ethnic minorities such as Volga Tatars and Volga Germans. The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan has been compared to Holodomor in Ukraine, and in 2008, the All-Russian Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) asked the United Nations to condemn the 1921–22 Tatarstan famine as genocide of Muslim Tatars.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Vietnamese Emperor Minh Mạng unleashed persecution of Cham Muslims after he conquered the final remnants of Champa in 1832. The Vietnamese coercively fed lizard and pig meat to Cham Muslims and cow meat to Cham Hindus against their will to punish them and assimilate them to Vietnamese culture.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 11 October 2019 a mass shooting occurred in a mosque in northern Burkina Faso which left 16 people dead and two injured. It happened while the residents were praying inside the Grand Mosque in Salmossi, a village close to the border with Mali. "AFP" reported that 13 people died on the spot while 3 died later due to the injuries.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: During the internal armed conflict in the Central African Republic in 2013, anti-balaka militiamen were targeting Bangui's Muslim neighbourhoods and Muslim ethnic groups such as the Fulas.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Early 2014 marked a turning point; hardened by war and massacres, the anti-balaka committed multiple atrocities. In 2014, Amnesty International reported several massacres committed by anti-balaka against Muslim civilians, forcing thousands of Muslims to flee the country.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 24 June 2014, anti-balaka gunmen killed 17 Muslim Fula people at a camp in Bambari. Some of the bodies were mutilated and burnt by the assailants.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 11 October 2017, 25 Muslim civilians were massacred by anti-balaka militiamen inside a mosque in the town of Kembe.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In February 1979, anti-Muslim riots occurred in southern Chad, as a result hundreds or thousands of Muslim civilians died.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 23 March 2019, several attacks by gunmen killed at least 160 and injured at least 55 Muslim Fulani herdsmen, because of the allegations that the villagers were involved in supporting Islamic terrorism. Two villages, Ogossagou and Welingara, were particularly affected.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In Nardaran, a deadly incident broke out in 2015 between Azerbaijan security forces and religious Shia residents in which two policemen and four suspected Shia Muslim militants were killed.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: As a result of this incident, the Azerbaijani parliament passed laws prohibiting people with religious education received abroad to implement Islamic rites and ceremonies in Azerbaijan, as well as to preach in mosques and occupy leading positions in the country; as well as prohibiting the display of religious paraphernalia, flags, and slogans, except in places of worship, religious centers, and offices. Ashura festivities in public have also been banned. The Azerbaijani government also passed a law to remove the citizenship of Azerbaijani citizens who fight abroad.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Hainan is China's southernmost region inhabited by the Utsul Muslim population of approximately 10,000. In September 2020, the hijab was banned from schools in the region.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Earlier in 2019, a CCP document titled "Working Document regarding the strengthening of overall governance over Huixin and Huihui Neighbourhood" described a number of measures to be taken on the Utsuls, including increased surveillance of residents in Muslim neighbourhoods, ban on traditional dress in schools and government offices, rebuilding of mosques to a smaller size and without "Arabic tendencies", removal of Arabic script from shopfronts, along with words like "halal" and "Islamic".


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: When Hui started migrating into Lhasa in the 1990s, rumours circulated among Tibetans in Lhasa about the Hui, such as that they were cannibals or ate children. In February 2003, Tibetans rioted against Hui, destroying Hui-owned shops and restaurants. Local Tibetan Buddhist religious leaders led a regional boycott movement that encouraged Tibetans to boycott Hui-owned shops, spreading the myth that Hui put the ashes of cremated imams in the cooking water they used to serve Tibetans food, in order to convert Tibetans to Islam.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In Tibet, the majority of Muslims are Hui people. Hatred between Tibeans and Muslims stems from events during the Muslim warlord Ma Bufang's oppressive rule in Qinghai such as Ngolok rebellions (1917–49) and the Sino-Tibetan War, but in 1949 the Communists put an end to the violence between Tibetans and Muslims, however, new Tibetan-Muslim violence broke out after China engaged in liberalization. Riots broke out between Muslims and Tibetans over incidents such as bones in soups and prices of balloons, and Tibetans accused Muslims of being cannibals who cooked humans in their soup and of contaminating food with urine. Tibetans attacked Muslim restaurants. Fires set by Tibetans which burned the apartments and shops of Muslims resulted in Muslim families being killed and wounded in the 2008 mid-March riots. Due to Tibetan violence against Muslims, the traditional Islamic white caps have not been worn by many Muslims. Scarfs were removed and replaced with hairnets by Muslim women in order to hide. Muslims prayed in secret at home when in August 2008 the Tibetans burned the Mosque. Incidents such as these which make Tibetans look bad on the international stage are covered up by the Tibetan exile community. The repression of Tibetan separatism by the Chinese government is supported by Hui Muslims. In addition, Chinese-speaking Hui have problems with Tibetan Hui (the Tibetan speaking Kache minority of Muslims).


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 8 October 2012, a mob of about 200 Tibetan monks beat a dozen Dungans (Hui Muslims) in Luqu County, Gansu province, in retaliation for the Chinese Muslim community's application to build a mosque in the county.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The main Mosque in Lhasa was burned down by Tibetans and Chinese Hui Muslims were violently assaulted by Tibetan rioters in the 2008 Tibetan unrest. Tibetan exiles and foreign scholars like ignore and do not talk about sectarian violence between Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims. The majority of Tibetans viewed the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 positively and it had the effect of galvanizing anti-Muslim attitudes among Tibetans and resulted in an anti-Muslim boycott against Muslim owned businesses. Tibetan Buddhists propagate a false libel that Muslims cremate their Imams and use the ashes to convert Tibetans to Islam by making Tibetans inhale the ashes, even though the Tibetans seem to be aware that Muslims practice burial and not cremation since they frequently clash against proposed Muslim cemeteries in their area.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Since the Chinese government supports and backs up the Hui Muslims, the Tibetans deliberately attack the Hui Muslims as a way to demonstrate anti-government sentiment and because they have a background of sectarian violence against each other since Ma Bufang's rule due to their separate religions and ethnicity and Tibetans resent Hui economic domination.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The city of Karamay has banned Islamic beards, headwear, and clothing on buses. China's far-western Xinjiang province have passed a law to prohibit residents from wearing burqas in public. China has also banned Ramadan fasting for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members in certain parts of Xinjiang. Amnesty International has said Uyghurs face widespread discrimination in employment, housing, and educational opportunities, as well as curtailed religious freedom and political marginalization. Uyghurs who choose to practice their faith can only use a state-approved version of the Koran; men who work in the state sector cannot wear beards and women cannot wear headscarves. The Chinese state controls the management of all mosques, which many Uyghurs feel stifles religious traditions that have formed a crucial part of their identity for centuries. Children under the age of 18 are not allowed to attend religious services at mosques. According to Radio Free Asia in April 2017, the CCP banned Islamic names such as "Saddam", "Hajj", and "Medina" for babies born in Xinjiang. Since 2017, it is alleged that China has destroyed or damaged 16,000 mosques in China's Xinjiang province – 65% of the region's total.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: According to human rights organizations and western media Uyghurs face discrimination and religious persecution at the hands of the government authorities. In a 2013 news article, "The New York Times" reported, "Many Uighurs are also convinced that Beijing is seeking to wipe out their language and culture through assimilation and education policies that favor Mandarin over Uighur in schools and government jobs. Civil servants can be fired for joining Friday afternoon prayer services, and Uighur college students say they are often required to eat lunch in school cafeterias during the holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast."


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Chinese authorities have confiscated passports from all residents in largely Muslim region of Xinjiang, populated by Turkic-speaking Uyghurs.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In August 2018, the United Nations said that credible reports had led it to estimate that up to a million Uighurs and other Muslims were being held in "something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy". The U.N.'s International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination said that some estimates indicated that up to 2 million Uighurs and other Muslims were held in "political camps for indoctrination", in a "no-rights zone". Conditions in Xinjiang had deteriorated that they were described by political scientists as "Orwellian".


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: These so-called "re-education" camps and later, "vocational training centres", were described by the government for "rehabilitation and redemption" to combat terrorism and religious extremism. In response to the UN panel's finding of indefinite detention without due process, the Chinese government delegation officially conceded that it was engaging in widespread "resettlement and re-education" and State media described the controls in Xinjiang as "intense".


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 31 August 2018, the United Nations committee called on the Chinese government to "end the practice of detention without lawful charge, trial, and conviction", to release the detained persons, to provide specifics as to the number of interred individuals and the reasons for their detention, and to investigate the allegations of "racial, ethnic, and ethno-religious profiling". A BBC report quoted an unnamed Chinese official as saying that "Uighurs enjoyed full rights" but also admitting that "those deceived by religious extremism... shall be assisted by resettlement and re-education". On 10 September 2018, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet urged China to allow observers into Xinjiang and expressed concern about the situation there. She said that: "The UN rights group had shown that Uyghurs and other Muslims are being detained in camps across Xinjiang and I expect discussions with Chinese officials to begin soon".


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The U.S. Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 imposes sanctions on foreign individuals and entities responsible for human rights violations in China's Xinjiang region.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Communalism and communal violence is a longstanding problem in Indian society, especially between Hindus and Muslims. Scholars have observed that in the Hindu–Muslim communal riots in India, it is invariably Muslims who suffer the greatest losses. Proportionately more Muslims are killed and more Muslim property is destroyed. In 1961 and 1964 there were riots in Jamshedpur, Rourkela, and Jabalpur. Major riots took place in Ranchi, Bihar in 1967 and in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in 1969. In the 1970s and 1980s major communal riots took place. In many of these riots nearly 1,000 Muslims were killed. In 1992–93, riots took place in Bombay in which 50 Muslims perished. From 1992 to 2003 the Muslim community faced a series of communal riots, among which the most serious was the Babri mosque incident.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The 2002 Gujarat riots were a series of incidents starting with the Godhra train burning and the subsequent communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat. On 27 February 2002, an allegedly Muslim mob burnt the Sabarmati Express train and 58 Hindus including 25 women and 15 children were burnt to death. Frontline claimed that the blame of train burning was put on Muslims, while larger sections of media reported that it was Muslim mob which burnt the train. Attacks against Muslims and general communal riots arose on a large scale across the state, in which 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were ultimately killed; 223 more people were reported missing. 536 places of worship were damaged: 273 dargahs, 241 mosques and 19 temples. Muslim-owned businesses suffered the bulk of the damage. 6,000 Muslims and 10,000 Hindus fled their homes. Preventive arrests of 17,947 Hindus and 3,616 Muslims were made. In total, 27,901 Hindus and 7,651 Muslims were arrested.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The 2020 Delhi riots, which left more than 53 dead and hundreds injured including both Hindus and Muslims, were triggered by protests against a citizenship law seen by many critics as anti-Muslim and part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. According to Ashutosh Varshney, the director of the Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University, “on the whole, the Delhi riots ... are now beginning to look like a pogrom, à la Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984”. According to Subir Sinha, a senior lecturer at the SOAS University of London, the north and northeast areas of Delhi were a focus of "highly inflammatory speeches from top BJP ministers and politicians" in the run-up to the Delhi election. Sinha continues that "the pent-up anger of BJP supporters" who lost the election in Delhi, effectively took it out on "the Muslim residents of these relatively poor parts of the city".


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: According to Thomas Blom Hansen, a Stanford University professor, across India "a lot of the violence perpetrated against Muslims these days is actually perpetrated by subsidiaries of the Hindu nationalist movement". According to Hansen, the police harassment of Muslims in Muslim neighborhoods in the run-up to the Delhi riots is "very well-documented". According to Sumantra Bose, a London School of Economics professor, since Narendra Modi's reelection in May 2019, his government has “moved on to larger-scale, if still localized, state-sanctioned mob violence”.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Muslim Moro people live in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and the southern provinces, remain disadvantaged in terms of employment, social mobility, education, and housing. Muslims in the Philippines are frequently discriminated against in the media as scapegoats or warmongers. This has established escalating tensions that have contributed to the ongoing conflict between the Philippine government, Christians, and Moro people.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: There has been an ongoing exodus of Moro (Tausug, Samal, Islamized Bajau, Illanun, and Maguindanao) to Malaysia (Sabah) and Indonesia (North Kalimantan) for the last 30 to 50 years, due to the annexation of their lands by Christian Filipino militants such as the Ilaga, who were responsible for massacres of Muslim villages from the 1970s to the late 1990s. This has changed the population statistics in both countries to a significant degree, and has caused the gradual displacement of the Moros from their traditional lands.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Religious minorities have been subjected to increased persecution and attacks owing to the widespread mono-ethnic Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism in Sri Lanka. A nationalistic Buddhist group, Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), is alleged to have been behind attacks on Mosques and Muslims, as well as having organized a moral unofficial police team to check the activities of Christian missionaries and Muslim influence in daily life. The BBC reported that "Sri Lanka's Muslim minority is being targeted by hardline Buddhists. ... There have also been assaults on churches and Christian pastors but it is the Muslims who are the most concerned. The BBS has received criticism and opposition from other Buddhist clergy and politicians. Mangala Samaraweera, a Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist politician who has served as Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2015, has accused the BBS of being "a representation of 'Taliban' terrorism" and of spreading extremism and communal hatred against Muslims. Samaraweera has also alleged that the BBS is secretly funded by the Ministry of Defence. Anunayake Bellanwila Wimalaratana, deputy incumbent of Bellanwila Rajamaha Viharaya and President of the Bellanwila Community Development Foundation, has stated that "The views of the Bodu Bala Sena are not the views of the entire Sangha community" and that "We don't use our fists to solve problems, we use our brains". Wataraka Vijitha Thero, a Buddhist monk who condemns violence against Muslims and heavily criticized the BBS and the government, has been attacked and tortured for his stances.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism is opposed to Sarvodaya, although they share many of the same influences like Dharmapāla's teachings by example, by having a focus upon Sinhalese culture and ethnicity sanctioning the use of violence in defence of dhamma, while Sarvodaya has emphasized the application of Buddhist values in order to transform society and campaigning for peace.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Beginning in July 1990, tensions between Muslims and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam arose. Tit-for-tat killings between Tamils and Muslims in the East resulted in the massacres of dozens of Sri Lankan Muslims in the Eastern Province. This culminated in the infamous Kattankudy mosque massacre in August 1990 by the LTTE. Following these massacres, thousands of Muslims fled Tamil-majority areas of the Eastern Province and resettled in Muslim-majority areas. The 1990 expulsion of Muslims from Sri Lanka was an act of ethnic cleansing carried out by Tamils of the LTTE organization in October 1990. In order to achieve their goal of creating a mono ethnic Tamil state in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, the LTTE forcibly expelled the 75,000 strong Muslim population. The first expulsion in Chavakacheri, was of 1,500 people. After this, many Muslims in Kilinochchi and Mannar were forced to leave their homeland. The turn of Jaffna came on 30 October 1990; when the LTTE drove through the streets in trucks and ordered Muslim families to assemble at Osmania College. There, they were told to exit the city within two hours.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school has been officially recognized by the government since 2009. Tajikistan considers itself a secular state with a Constitution providing for freedom of religion. The Government has declared two Islamic holidays, Id Al-Fitr and Idi Qurbon, as State holidays. According to a U.S. State Department release and Pew research group, the population of Tajikistan is 98% Muslim. Approximately 87–95% of them are Sunni and roughly 3% are Shia and roughly 7% are non-denominational Muslims. The remaining 2% of the population are followers of Russian Orthodoxy, a variety of Protestant denominations, Catholicism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: A great majority of Muslims fast during Ramadan, although only about one third in the countryside and 10% in the cities observe daily prayer and dietary restrictions.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: There is some reported concern among mainstream Muslim leaders that minority religious groups undermine national unity. There is a concern for religious institutions becoming active in the political sphere. The Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), a major combatant in the 1992–1997 Civil War and then-proponent of the creation of an Islamic state in Tajikistan, constitutes no more than 30% of the government by statute. Membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a party which today aims for a nonviolent overthrow of secular governments and the unification of Tajiks under one Islamic state, is illegal and members are subject to arrest and imprisonment. Numbers of large mosques appropriate for Friday prayers are limited and some feel this is discriminatory.