Editing Religious persecution (section)

===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]].