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Furthermore, anti-Christian sentiment of the first century was not expressed by the Roman authorities alone, but also by the Jews. As Christianity was, at that time, a sect which was largely emerging from Judaism, [4] much of this sentiment was the result of anger from the well established Jewish faith towards a new and revolutionary faith.
No religious group is free from harassment in the contemporary world. Klaus Wetzel, an expert on religious persecution for the German Bundestag, the House of Lords, the US House of Representatives, the European Parliament, and the International Institute for Religious Freedom, explains that "In around a quarter of all countries in the world ...
Christianity is the largest world religion and its adherents live across the globe. Approximately 10% of the world's Christians are members of minority groups which live in non-Christian-majority states. [12]
The advocacy group Freedom House produced a report entitled "Religious Freedom in the World" in 2000 which ranked countries according to their religious freedom. The countries receiving a score of 7, indicating those where religious freedom was least respected, were Turkmenistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea.
Taqwa is an Islamic term for being conscious and cognizant of God, of truth, of the rational reality, "piety, fear of God". [7] [8] It is often found in the Quran.Al-Muttaqin (Arabic: اَلْمُتَّقِينَ Al-Muttaqin) refers to those who practice taqwa, or in the words of Ibn Abbas, "believers who avoid Shirk with Allah and who work in His obedience."
This arises out of the presumption that Christian belief is a social norm, that leads to the marginalization of the nonreligious and members of other religions through institutional religious discrimination or religious persecution. Christian privilege can also lead to the neglect of outsiders' cultural heritage and religious practices.
Many studies only measure the frequency of certain "religious" activities including prayer or religious service attendance; however, just because a person exhibits religious behavior does not mean that he or she uses his or her religion to cope or even adheres to the set of beliefs that constitutes a religion. [28]
Similarly, Eric Hickey writes, "the history of religious violence in the West is as long as the historical record of its three major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with their mutual antagonisms and their struggles to adapt and survive despite the secular forces that threaten their continued existence." [64]