The general facts are undeniable and have been and continue to be documented in a number of reports issued by a variety of human rights organizations around the world.  According to one of the most recent compilations, Open Doors’ “World Wide List, 2021”—which was published in January 2021 and which annually ranks the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted for their faith—13 Christians are killed for their faith every day around the world; 12 are illegally arrested or imprisoned; 5 are abducted; and 12 churches or other Christian buildings are attacked.

About 309 million of these Christians “suffer very high or extreme levels” of persecution.  “That’s one in 8 worldwide, 1 in 6 in Africa, 2 out of 5 in Asia, and 1 in 12 in Latin America.”  More specifically and for the reporting period covered (Oct. 2019 – Sept. 2020), “4,761 Christians were killed for their faith”; an additional 4,277 Christians were unjustly arrested, detained, or imprisoned; 1,710 were abducted for faith-related reasons; and 4,488 Churches or Christian buildings were attacked.

The worst category, “extreme persecution”—the harassing, beating, imprisoning, raping, and/or slaughtering of Christians on sight—occurs in 12 of the 50 nations.  Nine of these top 12 worst persecutors are Muslim: Afghanistan (#2), Somalia (#3), Libya (#4), Pakistan (#5), Yemen (#7), Iran (#8), Nigeria (#9), Iraq (#11), and Syria (#12).  (That these nations are racially, culturally, politically, and economically very different—Arab, Asian, Iranian, sub-Saharan African, etc.—should be indicative that something else accounts for their commonality towards Christians.)

Over all, the persecution Christians experience in 39 of the 50 nations making the list is also either from “Islamic oppression” or is occurring in Muslim majority nations.  This means nearly 80 percent of the Christian persecution around the world—including of those 13 Christians killed for their faith every day—is committed by Muslims.

While the above numbers are important, including in displaying the magnitude of the problem, one should not lose sight that they represent real people; what they experience, when read in detail—girls chained and gang raped; Christians burned alive for supposedly “blaspheming” Muhammad; Muslim husbands and wives stabbing and poisoning each other whenever one apostatizes to Christ; another 30 having their heads sawn off just for the heck of it—is tragic if not bloodcurdling.

The following, for example, are among the most recent incidents to occur as of this writing (excerpted from the February, 2021 edition of the monthly “Muslim Persecution of Christians” reports):

• Uganda:  A Muslim husband splashed acid onto his wife after suspecting she had converted.
• Malta:  A Muslim man stabbed a former Muslim who converted to Christianity in an attempt to kill the apostate and please Allah.
• Iran:  Four converts to Christianity that were arrested on the charge of “acting against national security by forming a house Church,” were sentenced to a combined total of 35 years in prison.
• Pakistan:  Two Christian men reading the Bible in a park were arrested and are being charged with blasphemy—which carries the death penalty—after Muslims lied and told police that they were proselytizing.
• Somaliland: On Jan. 25, a Christian couple and their newborn baby were arrested.  On the next day, police searched and seized from their home recriminating evidence of Christianity.  Promoting any religion other than Islam is banned in Somaliland.  Their fate remains unknown.
• Algeria: A 43-year-old married Christian father of four was sentenced to five years in prison for reposting a cartoon of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam on his Facebook account—three years ago, in 2018.
• Kenya: Muslims torched five separate churches.  As occurred when vandals in France used human excrement to draw a cross on the Notre-Dame des Enfants Church in 2019, so these Kenyan arsonists also “committed the heinous acts of scooping human feces onto the buildings,” the source added.
• Sudan: The ninth church to be torched in Muslim-majority Sudan in two years occurred.
• Nigeria:  Suspected Muslim arsonists set Holy Family Catholic Church ablazeon Sunday.
• Algeria: Although all mosques were given permission to reopen on Feb. 15, churches were deniedthe same greenlight.
• Bangladesh:  Two Muslims brutally raped their neighbor, a married Christian mother, because they thought that the family consisted of “very weak Christians, [who] would not raise our voices.”
• Pakistan:  After a 23-year-old Christian girl applied for the position of math instructor in a school adjacent to a mosque in Islamabad, the Muslims around her began to harass and insult her—to the point of threatening her with rape and death if she did not convert to Islam.  An actual abduction attempt was also made.
• Democratic Republic of the Congo: On Sunday, Feb. 14—St. Valentine’s Day—Islamic terrorists killed13 civilians in the Christian majority nation, and burnt down a Catholic church during a raid.
• Nigeria: A Muslim colonel stole weapons from an armory and then blamed the 12 soldiers on duty of the theft.  Six of those 12 soldiers—all Christians—were then executed.  And, as they do every month, Islamic terrorists of the Fulani herdsmen variety butchered dozens of Christians.
• Indonesia:  Authorities publicly flogged two Christian men for drinking alcohol and gambling in Aceh, which enforces Islamic law, or Sharia.
• Sudan: On the day that the only Christian program on Sudanese television first aired, outraged Muslims urged authorities to remove it. “Christians and Jews are not only infidels, but they are cursed by Allah.”

As mentioned, this is just the latest sampling from the most recent compilation.  Every month contains similar, often significantly worse, accounts, both in quantity and quality.