Persecution of Muslims

Persecution of Muslims is the religious persecution inflicted upon the followers of the Islamic faith. This page lists incidents of ethnic cleansing in both medieval and modern history in which Muslim populations have been targeted by non-Muslim groups.

In the early days of Islam at 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. Even Muhammad was subjected to such abuse; while he was praying near the Kaaba, Aqaba Bin Muiitt 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.

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.

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, and who by 1050 destroyed the main Christian shrines and churches in Jerusalem. The Muslim leader, Al Hakim of Cairo blew up the ancient and magnificent Constantine Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1009, as well as most other Christian churches and shrines in the Holy Land.

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