Posted by:
Anonymous Muser
(
)
Date: January 20, 2022 01:58PM
"In June 2018, the Pew Research Center stated that over the course of 2016 Christians suffered harassment in 144 countries. By this calculation, Christians emerge as the world’s 'most widely targeted' faith group, slightly ahead of Islam.” Similarly, Open Doors' World Watch List 2019 shows an increase in the persecution of Christians in 73 countries (affecting 245 million Christians). It says that Christians faced extreme, very high and high levels of persecution in 2018."
I don't have the time/patience to do a deep dive into the numbers. However: (a) the # of countries isn't the best metric to use. The number of people actually being persecuted are. (b) Simply because 245M Christians reside in these countries doesn't necessarily mean that all 245M are being persecuted.
From Pew (a Forbes source):
https://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/21/global-uptick-in-government-restrictions-on-religion-in-2016/"Government actors – whether political parties or individual public officials – at times used nationalist, and often anti-immigrant or anti-minority, rhetoric to target religious groups in their countries in 2016."
The first table is a list of countries where "nationalist political parties or politicians targeted religious groups in 2016." Christians were targeted in 5 countries, Jews in 5, Muslims in 19 (including the US).
The second table lists countries where "nationalist social groups targeted religious groups in 2016."
Christians were victims in 1 country, Jews in 13, Muslims in 24 (the US targeted Muslims and Jews).
https://www.opendoorsuk.org/persecution/Open Doors (the other Forbes source) looks to be a Pentecostal advocacy group. Although most of the activity takes place in the Third World and Muslim countries, OD also reports anti-Christian activity in Mexico, which represents 130M Christians ("life is not getting easier for Mexican Christians" – I guess Catholics aren't Christian?) and Colombia, another 47M or so ("Most Colombians are Christians – 95 per cent of the population of 50.2 million. But Christians still aren’t safe in Colombia."). The harassment is from criminal gangs and cartels, not because of their Christianity.
Open Doors says that 5,898 Christians were murdered for their faith last year. Sure, I can accept that. It's terrible, and the total ought to be zero. But that's a far cry from being the most persecuted group on the planet.