Which countries or regions have the highest rates of homicides attributed to Islamist extremism vs Christian extremist actors since 2000?

1. Islamist extremism: concentrated deadly impact in majority‑Muslim conflict zones

Reporting summarized by the CSIS Burke Chair emphasizes that the vast majority of terrorist attacks and deaths in certain datasets have occurred in majority‑Muslim countries — a CSIS synthesis reports “83% of the attacks and 90% of the deaths” in one period took place in “solidly Islamic” countries, and that most suicide and vehicle attacks were carried out by Islamist groups, killing largely Muslim victims ^[1]. Country examples flagged in these sources where Islamist extremist groups (including ISIS/Islamic State and Boko Haram) have targeted minorities or fought insurgencies include Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique and Nigeria ^{[4] [5]}. These sources indicate a regional pattern: high lethal tolls from Islamist extremist campaigns in parts of the Middle East, the Sahel, and segments of sub‑Saharan Africa ^{[1] [4] [5]}.

2. Nigeria and the Sahel: mixed sectarian and insurgent fatalities

Data cited about Nigeria indicate extremely high numbers of targeted political violence deaths across religious lines since 2009: ACLED reported “just under 53,000 Muslims and Christians had been killed in targeted political violence since 2009” in Nigeria, where Boko Haram and related groups have caused major massacres and attacks on Christian and other communities ^[5]. This shows Islamist extremist campaigns can drive very high homicide counts in specific countries — but the data combine religious identities of victims and political/ethnic drivers, so attributing every death solely to “Islamist extremism” requires careful parsing ^[5].

3. Persecution of Christians by Islamic State: geographic hotspots

Wikipedian coverage of Islamic State’s persecution of Christians lists multiple countries where IS has systematically targeted Christian minorities (Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and some African theatres), documenting mass murder and displacement in those theatres ^[4]. That material underlines that in the 2010s and into the 2020s Islamist groups have been a principal source of mass killings of religious minorities in those conflict zones ^[4].

4. The U.S. and Western contexts: different dominant extremist homicide patterns

U.S.-focused analysis shows a different pattern: databases like the Extremist Crime Database and ADL reporting emphasize that far‑right and domestic extremist actors have been responsible for many ideologically motivated homicides in the United States, and the ECDB quantified hundreds of far‑right related homicide victims over decades while counting Islamist‑motivated homicide events and victims separately ^[2]. ADL’s U.S. reporting also notes that extremist‑related killings are a small share of total homicides but can have outsized social impact, and recent U.S. incidents in 2024–2025 included both white‑supremacist mass shootings and a notable Islamist-related vehicular attack ^{[3] [6]}. These U.S. data imply region‑specific dynamics: in many Western contexts the most lethal organized extremist threat in recent years has been from far‑right actors rather than foreign‑inspired Islamist groups ^{[2] [3]}.

5. Limits of the available reporting and why direct country‑by‑country comparisons are not provided

None of the supplied sources gives a comprehensive, cross‑national dataset that enumerates homicide rates “attributed to Islamist extremism vs Christian extremist actors since 2000” in a directly comparable way. CSIS and ACLED give regional and country case evidence and high‑level proportions ^{[1] [5]}, ECDB/PBS and ADL provide U.S. and Western breakdowns ^{[2] [3]}, and population‑oriented NGOs (Open Doors) highlight numbers of Christians killed for faith in countries of concern but with differing methodologies ^{[7] [8]}. Because methodologies, time windows, and definitions (terrorism vs targeted political violence vs hate crimes) differ across these sources, a single ranked list across all countries is not present in the supplied reporting ^{[1] [5] [2] [3] [4]}.

6. How to proceed if you want a rigorous cross‑national comparison

To build the precise ranking you asked for would require aggregating compatible datasets (e.g., ACLED for politically targeted killings, the Global Terrorism Database or CSIS compilations for terrorist fatalities, and specialized hate‑crime and extremist homicide databases for Western countries), harmonizing definitions of “attributed to” and of actor categories, and normalizing by population or by time period. The current sources point to where to look next — ACLED and CSIS for conflict zones and Islamist group fatalities; ECDB and ADL for U.S. extremist homicides — but do not themselves provide the unified country‑by‑country comparison you requested ^{[1] [5] [2] [3]}.

If you want, I can draft a research plan listing specific datasets and the precise harmonization steps needed to produce the requested country‑level comparison; current reporting does not supply that comparison outright ^{[1] [5] [2] [3]}.