This article is about the religious persecution in the U.S, religious persecution outside of the U.S, and violence because of religion and religious issues. You will learn about each of these topics, how they are bad for our world, and how we can help.

Firstly, religious persecution in the United States. People in any age range can be persecuted at any time in the U.S., whether it is severely hurting people, taking away rights, or killing. The first example is when people severely hurt others. People beat others on a daily basis for their belief in a certain god or holy idol. These people who are persecuted tend to leave their religion since they pray to their god(s) for it to stop and it never does. We can stop this by confronting the people who are persecuting the others and telling them to stop and explain why they must stop. The second example is, taking away rights. A school district in Texas told their students that they couldn’t write “Merry Christmas” on the cards they sent to the soldiers in Iraq. This isn’t right. American citizens have the right to a freedom of Speech. It is illegal to take away a right that was written in the Constitution. It may not be speech but a teacher nevertheless a district cannot tell you what you can and can’t write.  The third example of this is, people kill other people for their religion. A 19 year old Christian, Brendan Telvin, was shot to death by an Africa Muslim, Ali Muhammad Brown. He said it was a “just” thing to do and that it was “vengeance” for Muslims in the Middle East. He also killed three other Christians earlier in the year (2014). This story was found on Freedomoutpost.com. On other news pages, they didn’t have anything on the story. What is surprising is that when a White man shoots a Black man people scream “RACISM,” but when a Black Muslim shoots a White Christian, the story isn’t even covered on the news. We can stop this by having people realize that it isn’t the citizen’s fault for doing this, it isn’t the soldiers either. It’s the people who tell the soldiers what to do and when to do it. This is bad for our world because we don’t want to weaken our ties with other countries.

The second topic is religious persecution outside of the U.S. The terrorist group ISIS beheaded 21 men because they were “people of the cross.” This impacts society because people are dying for a belief. Everyone has their own beliefs and shouldn’t kill others for theirs. We can help by trying to understand that others are important too and we can’t just go and kill people because they don’t believe the same thing as you. Opendoorusa.com says that the top 5 worst Christian persecution countries are; 5- Afghanistan, 4- Syria, 3- Iraq, 2- Somalia, 1- North Korea. This is bad for our world because more people turn away from help in fear that they will just hurt them more. The people in these countries hate Christians because they believe that it is wrong and against the country’s main religion. The Lebanon government is forcing the religiously persecuted people, who have been thrown out of their house, buy the land that they pitch their tent on. In Lebanon you are either extremely rich or terribly poor and the only people who are extremely rich are the government workers or famous actors, sports players, etc. This is bad for the world because when people pray for help, if they don’t get answers, then they will turn from the religion and persecute others too. Johnathanmerritt.reliousnews.com says that about two-thirds of the Christian population in Iraq fled the country in order to escape persecution. This is bad for our world because Iraq could blame the Christian community for the loss of their population and start more conflict between the United States and Iraq since America is one of most Christian populated countries in the world. The way that we can fix this is by helping the people of Iraq stay in safety while still keeping a peaceful order in Iraq.

The third topic is violence because of religion. Addictivelists.com tells us that one of the biggest wars in history, the Crusades, was fought because of a religious battle between Muslims and Christians. They fought over the religious city of Jerusalem. In Muslim culture, Muhammad was very involved in Jerusalem and they thought it was his holy city. In Christian history, Jesus was the king of Jerusalem and they thought it was his holy city. They knew one or the other was wrong so they fought the battle for Jerusalem. Humanreligions.info says that in the span of 27 years, 1990-2007, 20,000 people have been killed for believing in a certain religion and being a leader instead of a follower.

In defense, there is no one trying to stop these attacks, abuses, and beatings. People aren’t out there and making the citizens aware of these things. If no one knows about them, then how are we supposed to go and reach out to those people? How will you make everyone realize the pain and struggle these people are going through? America is thought of as “the protector” country since we outreach to those in need in other countries where they need it most. So why don’t we help these people?

There are many problems in our world today. Religious persecution is just one of them, but it is a problem we have to fix. We have to fix this because of persecution inside of the U.S., persecution outside of the U.S., and Violence because of religion. This is one of the many things tearing this world apart so we must stop it.