This article focuses on the relationship between Islam and anti-Christian persecution with special focus on the history of persecution of Christians by the Muslims. Christians in Islamic scripture or law
Pact of Umar Some scholars argue that the Pact of Umar was responsible for demoting Christians to the status of inferior social beings. Most academic historians today, however, believe that the Pact of Umar in the form it is known today was a product of later jurists who attributed it to the venerated caliph Umar I in order to lend greater authority to their own opinions. The striking similarities between the Pact of Umar and the Theodesian and Justinian Codes suggest that perhaps much of the Pact of Umar was borrowed from these earlier codes by later Islamic jurists. At least some of the clauses of the pact mirror the measures first introduced by the Umayyad Caliph Umar II or by the early Abbasid caliphs.
Rights as dhimmis
===DevÅŸirme===
was the system of the collection of young boys from conquered Christian lands by the Ottoman sultans as a form of regular taxation in order to build a loyal slave army (formerly largely composed of war captives) and the class of (military) administrators called the "Janissaries", or other servants such as tellak in hamams. The word devÅŸirme means "collecting, gathering" in Ottoman Turkish. Boys delivered to the Ottomans in this way were called ghilmán or acemi oÄŸlanlar ("novice boys").
Ottoman Empire
During the Ottoman Empire, Christians were allowed to live and keep their religion, and were officially protected from persecution. They were subject to the and had fewer rights than the Muslim subjects of the Sultan (see State and Religion in the Ottoman Empire). For example, Christians could not testify in court against a Muslim. Proselytism was forbidden, and conversion to Christianity was punishable by death, in accordance with Islamic law. Things worsened during World War I. Nationalist movements like the Young Turks began persecuting and murdering Assyrians, Greeks, Armenians, and other Christians in what is referred as the Assyrian, the Pontic Greek, and the Armenian Genocides by the respective communities. It is estimated that more than one million Armenians were murdered and most had to abandon regions that they had inhabited for thousands of years.
Under Ottoman rule, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired power as an autonomous millet. The ecumenical patriarch was the religious and administrative ruler of the entire "Greek Orthodox nation" (Ottoman administrative unit), which encompassed all the Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Empire.
The Ottoman Empire was marked by periods of limited tolerance and periods of often bloody repression of non-Muslims. One of the worst such episodes occurred under Yavuz Sultan Selim I. These events include the atrocities against the Serbs in AD 1804-1878 the Greeks in AD 1814-1832 . and the Bulgarian AD 1876-1877 to selectively name but a few instances (also see Phanariote). As well as many individual Christians being made martyrs for stating their faith or speaking negatively against Islam. The Janissary army corps consisted of young men who were brought to Istanbul as child-slaves (and were often from Christian households) who were converted, trained and later employed by the Sultan (the devshirme system).
The Ottoman Empire that displaced the Byzantine Empire's presence in the Balkans and in Anatolia caused Muslims to come into more direct contact with Christians. One of the first things that Mehmet the Conqueror did was to allow the Church to elect a new patriarch, Gennadius Scholarius. The Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon, which had been Christian churches, were converted into mosques; however, the majority of churches, both in Constantinople and elsewhere, remained in Christian hands. They were endowed with civil as well as ecclesiastical power over all Christians in Ottoman territories. Because the Ottomans made no distinction between nationality and religion, all Christians, regardless of their language or ethnicity, were considered a single millet, or community. The patriarch, as the highest ranking hierarch, was thus invested with civil and religious authority and made ethnarch, head of the entire Christian Orthodox population. This practically meant that all Orthodox Churches within Ottoman territory were under the control of Constantinople. Thus, the authority and jurisdictional frontiers of the patriarch were enormously enlarged.
Islam not only recognized Jesus as a prophet, but also tolerated Christians as another People of the Book. As such, the Church was not extinguished nor was its canonical and hierarchical organization completely destroyed. Its administration continued to function, though in lesser degree, as it was no longer endorsed by the ruling class. However, these rights and privileges (see Dhimmi), including freedom of worship and religious organization, were often established in principle but seldom corresponded to reality. The legal privileges of the patriarch and the Church depended, in fact, on the whim and mercy of the Sultan and the Sublime Porte. The Ottoman sultanate rarely viewed Christians as more than second-class citizens. Pogroms of Christians under Ottoman rule were not unknown. Devastating, too, for the Church was the fact that it could not bear witness to Christ. Christian missionary work was virtually impossible, whereas conversion to Islam was entirely permissible and encouraged. Converts to Islam who returned to Orthodoxy were put to death as apostates. No new churches could be built and even the ringing of church bells was prohibited. Education of the clergy and the Christian population either ceased altogether or was reduced to the most rudimentary elements.
==Persecution by the "Young Turks"==
During 1894-1923 the Ottoman Empire conducted a policy of genocide against the Christian population living within its extensive territory. The Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, issued an official governmental policy of genocide against the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1894. Systematic massacres took place in 1894-1896 when Abdul savagely killed 300,000 Armenians throughout the provinces. In 1909 government troops killed, in the towns of Adana alone, over 20,000 Christian Armenians.
In the first two decades of the 20th century, there were massacres of Orthodox Greeks, Slavs, and Armenians in the Ottoman empire, culminating in the Armenian Genocide, the exodus of Pontian Greeks resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands Pontic Greeks, and the near destruction of the ancient Assyrian community in Anatolia or Asia Minor.
Turkey
In September 1955, the state-sponsored Istanbul pogrom was directed primarily at 100,000-strong Greek minority. Many Greek Christians left Istanbul after the pogrom.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is still in a difficult position. Turkey requires by law that the Ecumenical Patriarch must be an ethnic Greek that holds Turkish citizenship by birth.
The state's expropriation of church property and the closing of the Orthodox Theological School of Halki are also difficulties faced by the Church of Constantinople. In 1971, the Halki seminary in Istanbul was closed along with other private higher education institutions in Turkey. Despite appeals from the United States, the European Union and various governmental and non-governmental organizations, the School has remained closed since 1971.
Egypt In the 12th century,the ruler of the Almohad dynasty (JD Demott) killed or forcibly converted Jews and Christians in Al-Andalus and the Maghreb, putting an end to the existence of Christian communities in North Africa outside Egypt.
In Egypt the government does not officially recognize conversions from Islam to Christianity; because certain interfaith marriages are not allowed either, this prevents marriages between converts to Christianity and those born in Christian communities, and also results in the children of Christian converts being classified as Muslims and given a Muslim education. The government also requires permits for repairing churches or building new ones, which are often withheld. Foreign missionaries are allowed in the country only if they restrict their activities to social improvements and refrain from proselytizing. The Coptic Pope Shenouda III was internally exiled in 1981 by President Anwar Sadat, who then chose five Coptic bishops and asked them to choose a new pope. They refused, and in 1985 President Hosni Mubarak restored Pope Shenouda III, who had been accused of fomenting interconfessional strife. Particularly in Upper Egypt, the rise in extremist Islamist groups such as the Gama'at Islamiya during the 1980s was accompanied by attacks on Copts and on Coptic churches; these have since declined with the decline of those organizations, but still continue. The police have been accused of siding with the attackers in some of these cases. Nevertheless, high-ranking government officials in Egypt have included Copts like Boutros Ghali and his grandson, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Iraq
Iraq's Christian community numbered 1.4 million in 1980 at the start of Iraq's war on Iran. They were tolerated under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, who even made one of them, Tariq Aziz, his deputy. However, since the Saddam Hussein was overthrown, violence against Christians has increased. As a small minority without a militia of their own, Iraqi Christians have been persecuted by both Shi’a and Sunni Muslim militias, and also by criminal gangs.
Sudan There is an abundance of evidence since the early 1990s of oppression and persecution of Christians, including by Sudan's own Sudan Human Rights Organization, which in mid-1992 reported on forcible closure of churches, expulsion of priests, forced displacement of populations, forced Islamisation and Arabisation, and other repressive measures of the Government. In 1994 it also reported on widespread torture, ethnic cleansing and crucifixion of pastors. Pax Christi has also reported on detailed cases in 1994, as has Africa Watch. Roman Catholic bishop Macram Max Gassis, Bishop of El Obeid, also reported to the Fiftieth Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, in Geneva, in February 1994 on accounts of widespread destruction of hundreds of churches, forced conversions of Christians to Islam, concentration camps, genocide of the Nuba people, systematic rape of women, enslavement of children, torture of priests and clerics, burning alive of pastors and catechists, crucifixion and mutilation of priests. The foregoing therefore serve to indict the Sudanese Government itself for flagrant violations of human rights and religious freedom.
In addition, it is estimated that over 1.5 million Christians have been killed by the Janjaweed, the Arab Muslim militia, and even suspected Islamists in northern Sudan since 1984.
It should also be noted that Sudan's several civil wars (which often take the form of genocidal campaigns) are often not only or purely religious in nature, but also ethnic, as many black Muslims, as well as Muslim Arab tribesmen, have also been killed in the conflicts.
Pakistan In November 2005 3,000 militant Islamists attacked Christians in Sangla Hill in Pakistan and destroyed Roman Catholic, Salvation Army and United Presbyterian churches. The attack was over allegations of violation of blasphemy laws by a Pakistani Christian named Yousaf Masih. The attacks were widely condemned by some political parties in Pakistan. However, Pakistani Christians have expressed disappointment that they have not received justice. Samson Dilawar, a parish priest in Sangla Hill, has said that the police have not committed to trial any of the people who were arrested for committing the assaults, and that the Pakistani government did not inform the Christian community that a judicial inquiry was underway by a local judge. He continued to say that Muslim clerics "make hateful speeches about Christians" and "continue insulting Christians and our faith".
In February 2006 churches and Christian schools were targeted in protests over the publications of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in Denmark, leaving two elderly women injured and many homes and properties destroyed. Some of the mobs were stopped by police.
Indonesia Religious conflicts have typically occurred in Western New Guinea, Maluku (particularly Ambon), and Sulawesi. The presence of Muslims in these regions is in part a result of the transmigrasi program of population re-distribution. Conflicts have often occurred because of the aims of radical Islamist organizations such as Jemaah Islamiah or Laskar Jihad to impose Sharia.
Palestinian territories There have been anti-Christian incidents carried out in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority. Some claim that this represents a pattern of deliberate mistreatment by the PA; others hold that these are isolated incidents that reflect the beliefs of the individuals involved, but not the society in general. There is an ongoing trend for emigration among Palestinian Christians doubling that of Muslims. The ratio of Christians among Palestinians went from 18%-20% in 1947 to 13% in 1966 to 2.1% in 1993. Among the causes is the rise of Islamism in Palestinian politics and the comparatively warmer welcome that Christians have in Israel and the Americas. In contrast to the Christian exodus from the West Bank that started after Jordanian occupation in 1948, the Christian Arab population in Israel has grown 400% from approximately 34,000 in 1948 to nearly 130,000 in 2005. A strong majority of the Bethlehem population used to be Christian, now their numbers have dwindled to about 20%.
Ever since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007, there have been reports of numerous brutal beatings of Christian Palestinians (often women and elderly people) and destruction of property of Christian places of worship by Muslim Palestinians.
Other Muslim nations
In Saudi Arabia Christians are arrested and lashed in public for practicing their faith openly. Bibles and other non-Muslim religious books are captured, piled up and burned by the religious police of Saudi. No non-Muslims are allowed to become Saudi citizens. Prayer services by Christians are frequently broken up by the police and the Christians are arrested and tortured without even allowing them to be released on bail.
Though Iran recognizes Assyrian and Armenian Christians as a religious minority and awards them seats in Parliament, apostasy from Islam is punishable by death.
In the Philippines, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf has attacked and killed Christians.