100,000 Christian martyrs every year!

Or are there?

It seems that the vast majority of these martyrs are actually killed by other "christians"!

I suspect if someone did the numbers on moslems that there would be similar results - the US invasion of Iraq notwithstanding, it was (AFAIK) mostly the intra-moslem violence engendered by the invasion that caused the thousands of civilian casualties - not the invading forces??

*cough* not enough. *cough*

reply to post by Jefferton


Bloody Hell,

Condoning more killing and you get starred for it.

Neither comment or star was warranted.

Christians love to be persecuted. Without persecution, they wouldn't have an "us versus them" mentality, or martyrs, or heroes. All they'd have is their set of beliefs, which they wouldn't even have to justify.

reply to post by Blue Shift


Persecution is part of their theology, they expect to be persecuted.

I doubt that 100,000 Christians are killed every year because of their faith. But the fact that over 5000 (a realistic statistic presented in the article) people are killed each year because of their faith is just as disturbing to me.

Openeye
I doubt that 100,000 Christians are killed every year because of their faith. But the fact that over 5000 (a realistic statistic presented in the article) people are killed each year because of their faith is just as disturbing to me.

Even that number isn't all that surprising to me. Any time you separate yourself in some way from the rest of the people around you, you set yourself up to be killed. And religion is one of the oldest reasons people created to hate each other.

And in this day and age, if you profess to being a certain religion and you're in a group of people who tell you they hate you for it and want to kill you, if you don't move somewhere else, you're asking to be killed. Move to St. Louis, Missouri. Nobody killing Christians there.

being killed for being a christian isn't the same thing as dieing for your beliefs.
the word martyr is being exaggerated greatly here.

reply to post by Bisman


further - I suspect even fewer are being killed because they are Christians

rather because they are NOT :

religious sect A

political ideology B

ethnicicity C

or some combo of the above