May 12, 2010:  The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a report recently naming the nations it believed responsible for the worst examples of religious persecution. Nine of the thirteen (Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkmenistan) were mainly Moslems terrorized non-Moslems, or other Moslem factions. In three of those nations (Iran, Iraq, Pakistan), much of the religious violence is between Shia and Sunni Moslems.

In Burma, China, North Korea and Vietnam the government persecutes any religion that it believes is a threat to the current government. China, North Korea and Vietnam are communist dictatorships, an arrangement which includes hostility to all religions. The Burmese military dictatorship is composed of officers who consider themselves good Buddhists, but are hostile to religious leaders who oppose them.

The report left out the fact that nearly every nation with a Moslem majority has a problem with non-Moslems being persecuted by Islamic radicals. This has been the case since the founding of Islam, and has gotten worse over the last five centuries as Christian nations surpassed the Islamic world in economic, military, scientific, educational and political developments. In the last few decades, Islamic radicalism, originally directed at the despotic and inefficient governments running most Islamic states, has turned hostile towards non-Moslems, blaming these "infidels" for the shortcomings of the Moslem nations. This has become very popular in the Islamic world, making it easier to inspire violence against nearby non-Moslems.