Editing Religious persecution (section)

==Forms==

===Religious cleansing===
{{Distinguish|Ritual cleansing}}
"Religious cleansing" is sometimes used in reference to the removal of a population from a certain territory based on its religion.<ref name=booth>{{cite book
 |       title = The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions
 |      editor = Ken I. Booth
 |     section = The History and Politics of Ethnic Cleansing
 |      author = Carrie Booth Walling
 | section-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=e4MsBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA47
 |       pages = [https://books.google.com/books?id=e4MsBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA49 pp.49-51]
 |   publisher = Routledge
 |        year = 2012
 |        isbn = 9781136334764
 |         url = https://books.google.com/books?id=e4MsBgAAQBAJ
 }}
</ref>  More recently, “religious cleansing” has been used in reference to the elimination of all religious structures or all individuals who adhere to a particular religion and live within a larger community which is composed of people who are members of the same ethnicity.<ref>url=https://fiacona.org/a-new-model-of-religious-cleansing-pioneered-in-manipur-india/</ref>

Throughout [[Classical antiquity|antiquity]], [[population cleansing]] was largely motivated by economic and political factors, but occasionally, ethnic factors also played a role.<ref name=booth/> During the [[Middle Ages]], population cleansing took on a largely religious character.<ref name=booth/> The religious motivation for population cleansing lost much of its salience early in the modern era, but until the 18th century, ethnic enmity in Europe continued to be couched in religious terms.<ref name=booth/> [[Richard Dawkins]] has argued that references to ''[[ethnic cleansing]]'' in the former [[Yugoslavia]] and [[Iraq]] are [[euphemism]]s for what should more accurately be called religious cleansing.<ref name=koopman>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199656431.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199656431-e-8|page=256|encyclopedia=The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming|author=Adrian Koopman|editor=Crole Hough|title=Ethnonyms|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2016|doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199656431.013.8|isbn=978-0-19-965643-1|url-access=subscription }}</ref> According to Adrian Koopman, the widespread use of the term ''ethnic cleansing'' in such cases suggests that in many situations, there is confusion between ethnicity and religion.<ref name=koopman/>

===Ethnicity===
[[File:Juif.JPG|thumb|During Nazi rule, Jews were forced to wear [[Yellow badge|yellow stars]] which identified them as such. Jews are an ethno-religious group and Nazi persecution of them was based on their race.]]
Other acts of violence which are not always committed against adherents of particular religions such as [[war]], [[torture]], and [[ethnic cleansing]], may take on the qualities of religious persecution when one or more of the parties which are involved in them are characterized by their religious homogeneity; an example of this occurs when conflicting populations that belong to different [[ethnic groups]] also belong to different religions or denominations. The difference between religious and [[Ethnic group|ethnic identity]] might sometimes be obscure (see [[Ethnoreligious]]); nevertheless, cases of [[genocide]] in the 20th century cannot be fully-explained by the citation of religious differences. Still, cases of [[genocide]] such as the [[Greek genocide]], the [[Armenian genocide]], and the [[Sayfo|Assyrian genocide]] are sometimes seen as cases of religious persecution and as a result, the lines between [[ethnic violence]] and [[religious violence]] are sometimes blurry.

Since the [[Early modern period]], an increasing number of [[religious cleansing]]s were entwined with ethnic elements.<ref name="Mann2005">{{cite book|author=Michael Mann|title=The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cGHGPgj1_tIC&pg=PR53|year=2005|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-53854-1|page=53}}</ref> Since religion is an important or a central marker of ethnic identity, some conflicts can best be described as "ethno-religious conflicts".<ref name="BercovitchKremenyuk2008">{{cite book|author1=Jacob Bercovitch|author2=Victor Kremenyuk|author3=I William Zartman|title=The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution|chapter=Characteristics of ethno-religious conflicts|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1cqjpHmhTZsC&pg=PA265|date=3 December 2008|publisher=SAGE Publications|isbn=978-1-4462-0659-1|page=265}}</ref>

[[Nazi]] [[antisemitism]] provides another example of the contentious divide between ethnic persecution and religious persecution, because [[Propaganda in Nazi Germany|Nazi propaganda]] tended to construct its image of Jews by portraying them as people who were members of an inferior [[Race (human categorization)|race]] (see [[Racial antisemitism]] and [[Nazi racial theories]]), it [[Dehumanization|dehumanized]] and [[Demonization|demonized]] Jews by classifying them as a race rather than a religion. In keeping with what they were taught in Nazi propaganda, the [[List of major perpetrators of the Holocaust|perpetrators]] of the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]] made no distinction between [[Jewish secularism|secular Jews]], [[Jewish atheism|atheistic Jews]], [[Orthodox Judaism|orthodox Jews]] and [[Jewish Christian|Jews who had converted to Christianity]].