Persecution of Muslims

Short description: Overview of hostility, discrimination and persecution of Muslims

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

In the early days of Islam in Mecca, pre-Islamic Arabia, the new Muslims were frequently 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.

Medieval

Early Islam

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.^[1] 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.^[2]

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.^[3]

Crusades

Main page: Religion:Crusades

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"^[4] 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.

This event, in conjunction with the killing of Germanic pilgrims who were travelling from Byzantium to Jerusalem, 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.

In part, it was also 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.

Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099

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...."^[5] 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."^[6]

During the massacre which was committed in Jerusalem during the First Crusade, it was reported that the Crusaders "[circled] the screaming, flame-tortured humanity singing 'Christ We Adore Thee!' with their Crusader crosses held high".^[7] Muslims were indiscriminately killed, and Jews who had taken refuge in their Synagogue were killed when it was burnt down by the Crusaders.

Southern Italy

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.^[8] The Normans conquered the last Arab Muslim stronghold by 1091.^[9] 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.^[10] 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.^[11]^[12]^[13]^[14]^{[excessive citations]} 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.^[15] 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.^[16]^[17]^[18]^[19]^[20]^{[excessive citations]} Some were exiled, with many finding asylum in Albania across the Adriatic Sea.^[21]^[22] Islam was no longer a major presence in the island by the 14th century.

The Aghlabids also conquered the island of Malta at the same time during their invasion of Sicily.^[23] 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.^[24] The Normans conquered it at the same time as Sicily.^[25] The Normans however did not interfere in the matters of Muslims of the island and gave them a tributary status.^[26] Their conquest however led to the Christianization and Latinization of the island.^[27] 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.^[28] Most of the Maltese Muslims were deported by 1271.^[29] 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.^[30]

Mongol invasions

Main page: Social:Mongol invasions and conquests

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.^[31] 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.^[32]^[33] 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.^[34] 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.

Site where the Mongol ruler Hulegu Khan destroyed a mosque in Baghdad during the siege of Baghdad

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.^[35] 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:

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!^[36]

The detailed atrocities include:

The Grand Library of Baghdad, which contained countless precious historical documents and books on subjects that ranged from medicine to astronomy, was destroyed. Survivors said that the waters of the Tigris ran black with ink from the enormous quantities of books that were flung into the river.
Citizens attempted to flee, but they were intercepted by Mongol soldiers who killed them with abandon. Martin Sicker writes that close to 90,000 people may have died (Sicker 2000, p. 111). Other estimates go much higher. Wassaf claims that the loss of life was several hundred thousand. Ian Frazier of The New Yorker claims that estimates of the death toll range from 200,000 to one million.^[37]
The Mongols looted and destroyed mosques, palaces, libraries, and hospitals. Grand buildings which had taken generations to build were burned to the ground.
The caliph was captured and forced to watch as his citizens were murdered and his treasury was plundered. According to most accounts, the caliph was killed by trampling. The Mongols rolled the caliph up in a rug, and rode their horses over him, because they believed that the earth would be offended if it were ever touched by royal blood. All but one of his sons were killed, and the sole surviving son was sent to Mongolia.
Hulagu had to move his camp upwind from the city, due to the stench of decay that emanated from its ruins.

At the intervention of Hulagu's Nestorian Christian wife, Dokuz Khatun, the city's Christian inhabitants were spared.^[38]^[39] Hulagu offered the royal palace to the Nestorian Catholicos Mar Makikha, and he also ordered that a cathedral should be built for him.^[40] Ultimately, the seventh ruler of the Ilkhanate, Mahmud Ghazan, converted from Buddhism 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.^[41]

Muslim and Jewish paternal cousin marriage was banned by the Yuan dynasty which also forced Muslims to obey Mongol customs like levirate marriage.^[42]^[43]^[44]^[45]^[46]^[47]^[48]^[49]^[50]^[51]^{[excessive citations]}

Iberian Peninsula

Old Mosque in Mértola, Portugal. Converted into a church.

A figure of a Moor being trampled by a conquistador's horse at the National Museum of the Viceroyalty in Tepotzotlan

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.^[52] 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.

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.^[53]

Expulsion of the Moriscos from Valencia

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."^[54] The reason doors were to be left open so as to determine whether they secretly observed any Islamic festivals.^[55] 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.^[56]^[57] The possession of books or papers in Arabic was near concrete proof of disobedience with severe reprisals and penalties.^[58] 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.^[59] All these laws and measures required force to be implemented, and from much earlier.

Between 1609 and 1614 the Moriscos were expelled from Spain.^[60] 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.'^[61]

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

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.

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.^[62]

Sikh Khalsa and Sikh Empire

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.^[63] Following the Siege of Sirhind, Banda Singh Bahadur ordered that all men, women, and children should be executed.^[63] All of the residents of Sirhind, regardless of whether they were men, women, or children were burned alive or slain.^[63] In December 1757, Sikhs pillaged the Doab and the city of Jullunder.^[63] 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.^[63] The body of Nassir Ali was dug out by Sikhs and flesh was thrust into it.^[63]

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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[64]^[65]^[66] 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.^[67]

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.^[68]^[69]

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.^[70] 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.^[71]

Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company and Japanese samurai they hired as mercenaries committed genocide against Muslim Bandanese on the Banda islands, quartering in their mosques, humiliating their women and beheading their orang kaya in the conquest of the Banda Islands.^[72]^[73]^[74]^[75]^[76]

Modern era

Asia Minor

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).^[77]^[78]

On 14 May 1919, the Greek army landed in İzmir (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 İzmir, Manisa, and Uşak),^[79] the local Muslim population was subjected to massacre, ravaging and rape.^[80] Johannes Kolmodin was a Swedish orientalist in İzmir. He wrote in his letters that the Greek army had burned 250 Turkish villages.^[81]

Turkey

The Republic of Turkey was founded on a strict interpretation of secularism by the war-hero turned statesman, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In the early republican era, the revolutionary Kemalist government had sought to actively de-Islamize society and turn Turkey into a fully Westernized country. The Kemalists had perceived religion, Islam in particular, to be a force of backwardness. As such, they cracked down on many outward expressions of Islam, whether orthodox or heterodox-folk manifestations of it. They wanted religion to be solely limited to the "conscience of individuals".^[82] The fifth Turkish prime minister, Şükrü Saracoğlu, had allegedly desired the abolition of religion altogether through government restrictions.^[83] The government had all shariah courts (including those relating to personal civil law) and traditional madrasas dissolved. The teaching of Arabic, and the Arabic adhaan, was also banned.^[82] The fez (an Ottoman Islamic head gear) was also banned, with European hats being mandated instead. Those who opposed this mandate were dealt with harshly.^[84] However, the military regime under Kenan Evren had softened its stance on Islam, seeing it as an alternative to communism.^[85] The Turkish generals had also promoted Turkish-Sunni Islam to counter Islamism, amidst the Iranian Revolution.^[86]

Azerbaijan

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

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.

Bulgaria

War distribution of clothing to Bulgarian Muslim refugees in Shumla from The Illustrated London News, 17 November 1877

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.^[87] 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.^[88] In 1950-1951 around 155,000 left Bulgaria as a result of Islamophobia and Anti-Turkish sentiment.

Cambodia

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.^[89] 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.^[90]

China

Capture of Dali, the capital of the Pingnan Sultanate in Yunnan, from the set Victory over the Muslims

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.^[91]^[92]

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.^[93]^[94]^[95] 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.^[96] 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.^[97] 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.^[98]

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.^[99]^[100]

The revolts were harshly suppressed by the Manchu government in a manner that amounts to genocide.^[101]^[102]^[103]^[104] Approximately a million people in the Panthay Rebellion were killed,^[105]^[106] and several million in the Dungan revolt^[106] as a "washing off the Muslims"(洗回 (xi Hui)) policy had been long advocated by officials in the Manchu government.^[107] 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.^[108] 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.^[109]^[110]

Demonstration in Berlin for Uyghur human rights

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.^[111] 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.^[112]

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.^[113] 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.^[114] 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.^[115]

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.^[116]^{[page needed]} During that time, the government also constantly accused Muslims and other religious groups of holding "superstitious beliefs" and promoting "anti-socialist trends".^[117] 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^[118] 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.^[119]

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.^[120]^[121]^[122]^[123]^[124]^[125]^[126]^[127]^[128]^[129]^{[excessive citations]} Hui Muslims who vandalized property during the protests against the book's publication were not punished but Uyghur protestors were imprisoned.^[130]

Fascist Italy

Ten thousand inmates were kept at the concentration camp in El Agheila.

The Libyan genocide was the systematic destruction of the indigenous Libyan Arab people and culture in Italian Libya by the Italian colonial authorities from 1911 to 1943, using the wider definition of genocide, where an estimated 250,000-750,000 Libyans died as a result of colonial-related causes.^[131]^[132] The most severe and frequent episodes of Italian atrocities against the locals came during the conflict between Italy and the indigenous rebels of 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.^[133]^[134]^[135] During this period, an estimated 83,000-125,000 Libyans were massacred or died in Italian concentration camps.^[136]^[131]

French Algeria

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:^[137]

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."

French Algeria became the prototype for a pattern of French colonial rule which has been described as "quasi-apartheid".^[138] 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":^[139] by 1913, only 1,557 Muslims had been granted French citizenship.^[140] 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.^[141] 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.^[142]

In response to France's recognition of Armenian genocide, Turkey accused France of committing genocide against 15% of Algeria's population.^[143]^[144]

Imperial Japan

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.^[145] 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.^[146]^[147] Defeated, 40,000 Rohingyas eventually fled to Chittagong after repeated massacres by the Burmese and Japanese forces.^[148]

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.^[149]^[150]^[151]^[152]^{[excessive citations]}

Panglong, a Chinese Muslim town in British Burma, was entirely destroyed by the Japanese invaders in the Japanese invasion of Burma.^[153] 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.^[154] 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".^[155] 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.^[156]

Dead bodies of the Chinese Hui Muslim Ha family who were slaughtered and raped by the Japanese in Nanjing. The photo comes from Case 5 of John Magee's film. On 13 December 1937, about 30 Japanese soldiers murdered all but two of 11 Chinese Hui Muslims from the Ha family in the house at No. 5 Xinlukou. A woman and her two teenaged daughters were raped, and Japanese soldiers rammed a bottle and a cane into her vagina. An eight-year-old girl was stabbed, but she and her younger sister survived. They were found alive two weeks after the killings by the elderly woman shown in the photo. Bodies of the victims can also be seen in the photo.^[157]^[158]

The Hui Muslim county of Dachang was subjected to slaughter by the Japanese.^[159]

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.^[160] Many Hui fought in the war against Japan.

The Japanese brought Indonesian Javanese girls to British Borneo as comfort women to be raped by Japanese officers at the Ridge road school and Basel Mission Church, and the Telecommunication Center Station (former rectory of the All Saints Church) in Kota Kinabalu as well as ones in Balikpapan and Beaufort. Japanese soldiers raped Indonesian women and Dutch women in the Netherlands East Indies. They got infected with STDs.^[161]^[162]^[163]

Sukarno prostituted Indonesian girls from ethnic groups like Minangkabau to the Japanese.^[164]^[165]^[166]^[167]^[168]^{[excessive citations]}

Middle East

Lebanon

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.^[169]

Syria

Anti-Islam Ba'athist writings on the walls of Hama city following the Hama Massacre in 1982. The propaganda slogan, which translates to "There is no god but the homeland, and there is no messenger but the Ba'ath party", denigrated the Shahada (Islamic testimony of faith).

A photo showing the destruction of Hama city after the massacre

The Hama massacre^[170] (Arabic: مجزرة حماة) was a genocidal^[171] campaign of extermination launched by Ba'athist Syria in February 1982, under orders of Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad to crush an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in Sunni-majority town of Hama. Hama was besieged for 27 days by Syrian military and Ba'athist paramilitaries, during which period the city was isolated from the outside.^[172]^[173] The ground operations of the massacre were supervised by Rifaat al-Assad, the brother of Hafez al-Assad, who commanded sectarian Alawite deathsquads such as the Defense Companies.^[174]^[170]

Prior to the start of operations, Hafez al-Assad issued orders to seal off Hama from the outside world; effectively imposing a media blackout, total shut down of communications, electricity and food supplies to the city for months. Then the massacre campaign was launched, which involved indiscriminate attacks, military bombardment, aerial attacks, etc.^[175] The indiscriminate bombings and mass-shootings by paramilitaries had razed much of the city to the ground and killed tens of thousands of civilians.^[176] Patrick Seale, reporting in The Globe and Mail, described the operation as a "two-week orgy of killing, destruction and looting" which destroyed the city and killed a minimum of 25,000 inhabitants.^[177] However, contemporary estimates put the total death toll to at least 40,000 civilians.^[173]^[178]^[179] The massacre is the "single deadliest act" of violence perpetrated by any Arab regime upon its own population, in Modern Arab history.^[180]^[181]

The attack has been described as a "genocidal massacre"^[182] which was motivated by anti-Sunni sectarianism of Alawite-dominated elites of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath party.^[183]^[184]^[185]^[170] The militant secularist ideology of neo-Ba'athism which advocated the elimination of religion and establishment of socialism in the society also played a role in the brutality of the massacre.^[186] Memory of the massacre remains an important aspect of Syrian culture and evokes strong emotions amongst Syrians to the present day.^[187]^[188] Women, children and all Hama inhabitants irrespective of their political leanings were targeted indiscriminately during the military onslaught. Even Ba'ath party members and their families became victims of slaughter and mass-shootings of Rifaat al-Assad's paramilitaries.^[188] Internationally, the Hama massacre became a symbol of the Assad regime's brutal repression and disregard of civilian lives.^[189]^[190]

Myanmar

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.

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.^{[citation needed]}

Rohingya Muslims at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, October 2017

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.^[191] 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^[192] and 250,000 in 1991.^[193]

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.^[194]^[195]

Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was accused of failing to protect Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims during the 2016–17 persecution.^[196] State crime experts from Queen Mary University of London warned that Suu Kyi is "legitimising genocide" in Myanmar.^[197]

Some buddhist leaders in Myanmar such as Ashin Wirathu promote violence against Muslims.

Nazi Germany

Nazi ideology's racial theories considered ethnic groups which were associated with Islam to be "racially inferior", particularly Arabs.^[198]

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.^[199] In Erquinvillers, another major massacre was committed against captured Muslim Senegalese troops by Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS troops.^[200]

During Operation Barbarossa, the Einsatzgruppen engaged in the mass execution of over 140,000 Soviet POWs,^[201] many of whom were killed because they had "Asiatic features".^[202]^[203] Civilian Muslim men were often mistaken for Jews and killed due to the fact that they had previously been circumsized.^[204] 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".^[205] Various Muslim ethnic groups were targeted for extermination, such as the Turkmens.^[206]

Philippines

U.S. soldiers pose with Moro dead after the Moro Crater massacre in 1906.

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.

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.

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 mass raping Moro girls who had been taken aboard a boat.^[207]

Polls have shown that some non-Muslim Filipinos hold negative views directed against the Moro people.^[208]^[209]^[210]^[211]^[212]^[213]^{[excessive citations]}

Russia

Russian Empire

Qol Şärif and his students defend their mosque during the Siege of Kazan.

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.^[214]

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.^[215] 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.^[215]

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.^[216]^[217] However, Russian policy shifted toward weakening Islam by introducing pre-Islamic elements of collective consciousness.^[218] 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.^[218] In response, Kazakh religious leaders attempted to bring religious fervor by espousing pan-Turkism, though many were persecuted as a result.^[219]

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.^[220] 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.^[221]

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.^[222]

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.^[223] The Decembrist Nikolai Ivanovich Lorer (ru) 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.^[224]^[225]^[226]^[227]^{[excessive citations]} Zass erected Circassian heads on poles outside of his tent and witnesses saw the wind blowing the beards of the heads.^[228] Russian soldiers and Cossacks were paid for sending Circassian heads to General Zass.^[229]^[230]^[231]^[232]^{[excessive citations]} 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.^[233]^[234] 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.^[235]^[236]^[237]^[238]^[239]^[240]^[241]^[242]^[243]^[244]^[245]^[246]^[247]^[248]^[249]^[250]^{[excessive citations]} Cossacks raped Circassian women and impregnated them with children.^[251] Circassian children were scared of Zass and he was called the devil (Iblis) by the Circassians.

Russians raped Circassian girls during the 1877 Russo-Turkish war from the Circassian refugees who were settled in the Ottoman Balkans.^[252] Circassian girls were sold into Turkish harems by their relatives.^[253]^[254] Circassians also raped and murdered Bulgarians during the 1877 Russo-Turkish war.^[255]^[256]^[257]^[258]^[259]^[260]^[261]^{[excessive citations]} Circassian women in the Balkans were raped by Russian soldiers in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877.^[262]^[263]^[264]^[265]^{[excessive citations]}

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.^[266] 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.

Soviet Union

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.^[267] 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^[268] during the Nazi occupation of Crimea.^[269] 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.

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.^[270]

South-eastern Europe (Balkans)

Mourners at the reburial ceremony for an exhumed victim of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia

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.^[271] 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.^[272]

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.^[273] 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.^[274]

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 and Macedonia during and after the Serbian–Ottoman War (1876–78).^[275] An estimated 49–130,000^[276]^[277]^[278]^[279]^[280]^[281]^{[excessive citations]} Albanians were either expelled, fled and/or retreated from the captured areas seeking refuge in Ottoman Kosovo.^[275]^[282] The departure of the Albanian population from these regions was done in a manner that today would be characterized as ethnic cleansing.^[282]

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.^[283] 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.^[284]^[285] 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.^[286] More than one million Muslims left the Balkans in the last three decades of the 19th century.^[287] Between 1912 and 1926 nearly 2.9 million Muslims were either killed or forced to emigrate to Turkey.^[286]

Between 10,000^[288] and 30,000^[289]^[290]^[291] 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.^[292] 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.^[293]

In the Bulgarian insurgency of the April Uprising in 1876 an estimate of 1,000 Muslims were killed.^[294]^[295] 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.^[296]^[297] The Turkish scholars Karpat and Ipek argue that up to 300,000 were killed and 1–1.5 million were forced to emigrate.^[298]^[299] 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.^[300] 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.^[301]

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.^[302] 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.^[303]

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.^[304]^[305]

Tatarstan

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,^[306]^[307] in which 500,000^[308] to 2,000,000^[309] peasants died. The event was part of the greater Russian famine of 1921–1922 that affected other parts of the USSR,^[310] in which up 5,000,000 people died in total.^[311]^[312] 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.^[313] The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan has been compared to Holodomor in Ukraine ,^[314] 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.^[315]^[316]

Vietnam

The Vietnamese Emperor Minh Mạng unleashed persecution of Cham Muslims after he conquered the final remnants of Champa in 1832.^[317]^[318] 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.^[319]

Current situation

Africa

Burkina Faso

On 11 October 2019 a mass shooting occurred in a mosque in northern Burkina Faso which left 16 people dead and two injured.^[320] 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.^[321]

Central African Republic

During the internal armed conflict in the Central African Republic in 2013, anti-balaka militiamen were targeting Bangui's Muslim neighbourhoods^[322] and Muslim ethnic groups such as the Fulas.^[323]

Early 2014 marked a turning point; hardened by war and massacres, the anti-balaka committed multiple atrocities.^[324] In 2014, Amnesty International reported several massacres committed by anti-balaka against Muslim civilians, forcing thousands of Muslims to flee the country.^[325]

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.^[326]

On 11 October 2017, 25 Muslim civilians were massacred by anti-balaka militiamen inside a mosque in the town of Kembe.^[327]

Chad

In February 1979, anti-Muslim riots occurred in southern Chad, as a result hundreds or thousands of Muslim civilians died.^[328]

Ethiopia

In April 2022, a group of Christian extremists opened fire at a Muslim funeral, killing more than 20 people. Amidst sectarian tensions, two mosques were burnt down and another two were damaged.^[329]

Mali

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.^[330]^[331]^[332]