Keep Factually independent
Whether you agree or disagree with our analysis, these conversations matter for democracy. We don't take money from political groups - even a $5 donation helps us keep it that way.
What are the global homicide rates attributable to religiously motivated violence for Muslims vs Christians since 2000?
Executive summary
Available sources do not provide a clear, global, year-by-year tally of homicides "attributable to religiously motivated violence" split between Muslims and Christians since 2000; reporting instead offers fragmented counts (for example, ACLED’s tally of just under 53,000 civilian killings in Nigeria since 2009 across Muslims and Christians [1]) and advocacy estimates such as Open Doors’ claim of “one Christian every two hours” killed for their faith derived from its World Watch List [2] [3]. Scholarly reviews and datasets stress definitional and attribution problems that make a clean global comparison impossible from the available material [4] [5].
1. The central measurement problem: motive, who counts, and what counts
Scholars and reviews emphasize that attributing a killing to “religious motivation” is methodologically fraught: motives are mixed, definitions vary, and social/political drivers often underlie ostensibly religious violence, so available evidence does not allow a simple causal linkage or neat global disaggregation by faith [4] [5]. The Stimson/PCIC brief notes actors commonly use religion to define targets while underlying drivers include horizontal inequalities, politics, and economics, complicating attribution of homicides to religion alone [6] [7].
2. What advocates and NGOs report — large, but partial, tallies for Christians
Christian advocacy groups such as Open Doors publish high-impact figures—Open Doors’ World Watch reporting and its 2025 summary claim thousands of Christian deaths and large displacement numbers, including “most” Christian deaths in countries like Nigeria and the assertion of 12 Christians killed for their faith each day in their reporting [8] [2] [3]. Those figures package a mixture of direct killings, targeted attacks, and broader persecution metrics; they reflect advocacy priorities (documenting persecution of Christians) and rely on a mix of sources and methodologies that are not presented as a comprehensive, globally comparable homicide dataset [3] [8].
3. Country case-study data — Nigeria shows overlapping victims and disputed tallies
Country-level sources illustrate the complexity: ACLED’s data for Nigeria counts just under 53,000 civilians (Muslims and Christians) killed in targeted political violence since 2009, while other groups or media summaries have claimed far larger numbers of Christians killed by jihadist groups in similar periods [1] [9]. ACLED and academic sources cited in the Nigeria literature point out most victims of groups like Boko Haram have been Muslims, and that explicitly religion-targeted events comprise a subset of political violence [1].
4. Comparative country-level homicide rates don’t equate to religiously motivated killings
Some cross-country summaries present average homicide rates by majority religion (for example a claim that the 19 most populous Muslim countries averaged 2.1 homicides/100,000 vs. 11.0 in comparable Christian-majority countries), but those figures are overall homicide rates—not homicides motivated by religion—and cannot be used to infer which religion’s adherents cause more religion-based homicides [10]. NationMaster and similar crime compilations stress that national homicide data mix crime, conflict, and state violence and often exclude combat deaths or fail to isolate motive [11] [12].
5. Multiple viewpoints and hidden agendas in the sources
Advocacy organizations (Open Doors, InterSociety) document high counts of Christian victims and focus public attention on persecution of Christians, which serves both humanitarian and mobilization agendas; independent conflict monitors (ACLED) aim for event-level coding and show mixed victim profiles, while academic reviews caution against labeling complex conflicts as purely “religious” [3] [1] [4]. Media summaries sometimes amplify advocacy claims without reconciling methodologies; readers should note each source’s mission affects framing [9] [8].
6. What a rigorous answer would require and what is not found in current reporting
A defensible global comparison of homicides “attributable to religiously motivated violence” for Muslims vs Christians since 2000 would require: (a) a consistent operational definition of “religiously motivated homicide,” (b) event-level global coding with motive attribution and victim/attacker religion, and (c) transparent methodology reconciling combat/terror/communal violence distinctions. Available sources do not provide such a harmonized global dataset; they offer case studies, advocacy tallies, and methodological warnings instead [5] [4] [6].
7. Practical takeaway for researchers and reporters
Use event-level datasets (e.g., ACLED, GTD) for region- or conflict-specific analysis and treat advocacy numbers as indicators of concern rather than definitive global counts; always check whether figures count all civilian conflict deaths, only explicitly religion-labeled attacks, or include displacement and persecution metrics [1] [5]. Where sources contradict (e.g., advocacy tallies vs ACLED), present both figures and explain methodological differences so audiences understand uncertainty and potential biases [9] [1].
If you want, I can attempt a country-by-country extract from the provided sources (Nigeria, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, ISIS-affected areas, etc.) to show how different data producers count victims and attribute motive, but the available material does not support a single, reliable global tally split by victim or perpetrator religion since 2000 [1] [8] [2] [4].