All regions
Palestine
In 1948 about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled and over 500 villages and neighbourhoods were emptied, with massacres such as Deir Yassin, Tantura and Lydda. Killings continued in later decades, from Qibya and Kafr Qasim in the 1950s to Sabra and Shatila in 1982 and the Ibrahimi mosque in 1994. Thousands were killed in the two intifadas and in the Gaza wars of 2008–09 and 2014. Since October 2023 Israel's war on Gaza has killed at least 74,000 people by Health Ministry count, displaced 90% of the population and destroyed most mosques. In the West Bank killings, settler attacks and camp clearances rose sharply, and over 9,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, a third without charge.
25 RecordsEast Turkistan (Uyghurs)
China has long restricted the faith of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, from the Ghulja crackdown of 1997 to the sweeps and disappearances after the Urumqi unrest of 2009. From 2017 the state built a network of camps and prisons: satellite research found more than 380 suspected detention facilities, and the UN says more than a million people have been held. Leaked police files from Konasheher county show over 12% of adults interned in 2018. About 16,000 mosques were damaged or destroyed, and shrines such as Ordam and Imam Asim were erased or stripped. Scholars such as Ilham Tohti and Rahile Dawut are serving life sentences, and the Qur'an translator Muhammad Salih Hajim died in custody. In 2022 the UN Human Rights Office said the detentions may constitute crimes against humanity; China rejects all of this.
19 RecordsRohingya (Arakan)
The Rohingya, a Muslim people of Myanmar's Rakhine (Arakan) State, have been driven into Bangladesh in waves: over 200,000 in 1978 and over 250,000 in 1991–92. In 2012 mobs backed by security forces drove more than 125,000 into camps inside Myanmar. From 25 August 2017 the army's 'clearance operations' burned at least 392 villages, killed at least 6,700 people in the first month by MSF's count, and drove about 725,000 into Bangladesh; the UN Fact-Finding Mission found genocidal intent. The army then bulldozed villages and mosques and built bases on the land. Since 2024 Rohingya have been caught between the junta, which forcibly recruits them, and the Arakan Army, which burned Buthidaung. Over 1.2 million Rohingya now live in the Cox's Bazar camps, and The Gambia's genocide case against Myanmar is before the ICJ.
16 RecordsKashmir
Since the armed conflict began in 1989, Indian security forces in Kashmir have been accused of massacres of protesters and mourners (Gawkadal, Hawal, Sopore, Bijbehara), mass rape (Kunan Poshpora), staged killings of civilians (Pathribal, Amshipora) and thousands of enforced disappearances. Thousands of Kashmiris have been held without trial under the Public Safety Act, and thousands of bodies lie in unmarked graves. In 2010 and from 2016 security forces met street protests with live fire and pellet guns. When India ended the region's special status in August 2019, it detained thousands, shut the internet for about 550 days and closed the Jamia Masjid; arrests under anti-terror law, including of rights defender Khurram Parvez, followed.
20 RecordsIndia
Muslims in India have faced repeated mass violence, from Nellie in 1983 and Hashimpura in 1987 to the riots after the Babri Masjid was torn down in 1992 and the Gujarat killings of 2002. Since 2015 cow vigilante mobs have lynched Muslims, often with police failing to act. Since 2022 state authorities have used bulldozers to punish Muslim families after communal clashes or protests, demolishing homes, shops, mosques and madrasas without due process; the Supreme Court set rules against this in November 2024. In Assam, 1.9 million people were left off the citizens' register, 'declared foreigners' are held at the Matia camp, and Bengali-origin Muslims are evicted from their land. The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act offers fast-track citizenship to non-Muslim migrants only.
28 RecordsSyria
In 1982 the government of Hafez al-Assad crushed Hama, killing between 10,000 and 40,000 people. After the 2011 uprising the Assad regime answered protests with mass arrest, torture, sieges and bombing. SNHR has documented 177,057 people forcibly disappeared from 2011 to August 2025, about 90% of them by the regime, and Amnesty estimated up to 13,000 were hanged in Sednaya prison alone. Massacres such as Houla, Darayya and al-Bayda, chemical attacks on Ghouta, Khan Shaykhun and Douma, and the starvation of besieged towns killed thousands more. ISIS and the US-led coalition also killed civilians, and more than 13 million Syrians were displaced.
19 RecordsSudan (Darfur)
From 2003 Sudan's government and the Janjaweed militias it armed attacked Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa villages in Darfur; the UN estimated up to 300,000 deaths and over a million people were driven into camps. Mosques were burned and worshippers killed inside them. The ICC charged President Omar al-Bashir with genocide and in 2025 convicted militia leader Ali Kushayb. Since April 2023 the Rapid Support Forces, grown out of the Janjaweed, and allied militias have again massacred Masalit in El Geneina (10,000–15,000 killed, UN panel) and, after an 18-month siege, killed over 6,000 people in three days when they took El Fasher in October 2025. The war has displaced about 12 million people.
17 RecordsRussia (Chechnya, Dagestan, Caucasus, Crimea)
Russia's two wars in Chechnya killed tens of thousands of civilians: an estimated 30,000–100,000 in 1994–96 and 14,800–25,000 in 1999–2009, with massacres at Samashki and Novye Aldi, missile strikes on Grozny's market and a mosque, at least 200,000 people passed through filtration camps such as Chernokozovo, and 3,000–5,000 forcibly disappeared. Under Ramzan Kadyrov, homes of insurgents' relatives were burned and in January 2017 27 detainees were reportedly executed in one night. Across the North Caucasus, counter-insurgency brought torture in Kabardino-Balkaria, executions in Ingushetia, and watch lists, disappearances and destroyed homes in Dagestan. Elsewhere in Russia and occupied Crimea Muslims are jailed for alleged Hizb ut-Tahrir ties (289 recognised political prisoners) and for reading Said Nursi, and independent mosques are raided. Since 2022 men from Muslim republics have been mobilised to the war in Ukraine; protests in Dagestan and Grozny were broken up.
26 RecordsUzbekistan & Central Asia
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan treat independent Muslim practice as a threat. In Uzbekistan government forces killed hundreds of people in Andijan in May 2005, religious prisoners died in Jaslyk prison, and USCIRF estimated over 2,000 Muslims still jailed for their faith in 2021, with children kept out of mosques. Tajikistan forcibly shaved men's beards (nearly 13,000 in Khatlon in 2015), stopped women in hijab, closed 1,938 mosques in 2017, bans under-18s from religious events, closed the madrassahs, and in 2024 banned the hijab by law; Ismaili prayer houses in Badakhshan were shut in 2022. Turkmenistan bulldozed mosques in Ashgabat, shaves young men's beards and jails Muslims for 12–15 years for studying religious books.
37 RecordsKazakhstan
Ethnic Kazakhs from Xinjiang have been held in China's camps, and witnesses such as Sayragul Sauytbay, who taught in a camp for about 2,500 Kazakhs, fled to Kazakhstan. Kazakh authorities have in turn prosecuted the people who speak up: Serikzhan Bilash of Atajurt was arrested in 2019, and 19 Xinjiang Kazakhs were convicted in 2026 for protesting the jailing of relatives. At home, Kazakhstan allows only mosques under the state Muslim Board, jails Sunni Muslims for alleged Tabligh Jamaat membership (72 convicted in 2015–2018 alone, 12 more jailed in December 2025), fines worshippers for saying "Amen" aloud, keeps girls in headscarves out of school and in 2025 banned face coverings in public.
15 RecordsAmerica (Guantánamo, drone wars)
Since 2001 the United States has held Muslim men without charge at Guantánamo Bay and in secret CIA prisons abroad, where the US Senate found detainees were tortured. 780 men have passed through Guantánamo; 15 were still held in 2026. US drone and air strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan killed many civilians, including at weddings, a jirga, a hospital and family homes. European courts ruled that Poland, Romania and Lithuania hosted CIA secret prisons. In 2017 the US barred entry to citizens of several Muslim-majority countries.
23 RecordsSaudi Arabia & Gulf
In September 2017 Saudi Arabia detained prominent scholars, among them Salman al-Awda, Awad al-Qarni and Ali al-Omari, and prosecutors sought the death penalty for them. Saudi Arabia executed Shia men and others after unfair trials on terrorism or 'deviant beliefs' charges, 81 men in one day in March 2022. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have detained or deported Uyghurs to China. The Saudi- and UAE-led coalition's air war in Yemen killed thousands of civilians at weddings, markets, a funeral and a school bus. The UAE jails its own critics in mass trials and ran secret prisons in southern Yemen; Bahrain demolished Shia mosques in 2011.
21 RecordsEurope
In the 1992–95 Bosnian war Bosnian Serb forces held Bosniaks in camps such as Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje, burned civilians alive in Višegrad, besieged Sarajevo and in July 1995 killed 7,000–8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica, which UN courts ruled genocide. Bosnian Croat forces massacred the villagers of Ahmići. 614 mosques were destroyed, among them the Ferhadija in Banja Luka and the Aladža in Foča. In Kosovo in 1999 Serbian forces killed Albanian civilians at Račak and Meja. Later, Muslims in Europe were killed in racist attacks in Germany and the UK, and states passed laws against headscarves, face veils, abayas and minarets and closed mosques.
30 RecordsIraq
In 1988 the Ba'ath government's Anfal campaign killed 50,000–100,000 Kurds and destroyed about 1,200 villages, and the gas attack on Halabja killed 3,200–5,000. In 1991 the regime crushed the uprisings in the south and the north, and nearly two million fled. After the 2003 US-led invasion, Iraq Body Count has documented over 200,000 civilian deaths, including the sieges of Fallujah, Haditha and Nisour Square, alongside torture at Abu Ghraib. ISIS killed captives such as the Speicher cadets and blew up mosques and shrines like al-Nuri and Nabi Yunus, while the battle to retake Mosul killed 9,000–11,000 people. Government-linked militias made hundreds of Sunni men disappear, as at Saqlawiya.
17 RecordsEgypt
After the army removed President Mohamed Morsy in July 2013, police and army forces killed more than 1,150 protesters in July and August 2013, most at the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in on 14 August (at least 817 dead, HRW). More than 41,000 people were arrested or charged in the first ten months, most suspected Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Courts handed down mass death sentences, including 529 and 683 in two Minya trials in 2014. Detainees have been tortured, forcibly disappeared and denied medical care in prisons such as the Scorpion; up to 958 died in custody by the end of 2019. In North Sinai the army demolished thousands of homes and evicted about 100,000 people.
18 RecordsOther Arab states
Across North Africa and the Arab East, governments jailed, tortured and killed Muslims for their faith or political views. In Libya, Gaddafi's forces shot more than 1,200 prisoners at Abu Salim in 1996. Tunisia under Bourguiba and Ben Ali banned the headscarf in public institutions and held hundreds of suspected Islamists as political prisoners. Bahrain's 2011 crackdown killed protesters, arrested 2,929 people and tortured detainees, and since 2016 it has stripped Shia leaders of citizenship. Algeria banned the FIS in 1992 and sent some 9,000 suspected members to desert camps; thousands were forcibly disappeared in the 1990s.
24 RecordsTürkiye & Azerbaijan
In Türkiye, a dress rule issued after the 1980 coup kept headscarf-wearing women out of public jobs for about 31 years, until 2013. The military's 28 February 1997 decisions shut the middle sections of İmam Hatip schools, led to the closure of the Welfare Party, and brought a strict headscarf ban to universities, where students were pressed in 'persuasion rooms' to uncover. In Azerbaijan the state controls all mosques through the Caucasian Muslim Board, has closed Baku's Sunni mosques and banned the hijab for schoolgirls in 2010. In November 2015 police raided Nardaran during prayers, killing five villagers; 18 Shia men were later jailed for up to 20 years after a trial marred by torture claims. Muslims are still fined for praying together at home.
16 RecordsIran
In 1988 Iranian authorities executed 2,800–5,000 political prisoners in at least 32 cities. Sunni Muslims, mostly Kurds and Baluch, report that they may not build a mosque in Tehran; prayer halls have been closed or demolished and Eid prayers blocked. Kurdish activists and Sunni prisoners have been hanged after trials that rights groups call unfair, including a mass hanging of up to 20 Sunni Kurdish men in August 2016. On 30 September 2022 security forces shot worshippers and protesters after Friday prayers in Zahedan, killing 66–104 people, and killed 18 more in Khash five weeks later. Sunni clerics and associates of Zahedan's imam Molavi Abdolhamid have since been arrested.
17 RecordsPakistan
Pakistan's security agencies stand accused of enforced disappearances on a large scale, above all of Baloch and Pashtun men: the government's own commission had listed 6,506 cases by the end of 2019 and still registered 273 new ones in 2025, while rights groups say the true numbers are far higher. Human Rights Watch documented Baloch men taken by intelligence agencies and the Frontier Corps, many later found dead. Peaceful movements against disappearances, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee and the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, have been fired on, banned and jailed. Military operations displaced hundreds of thousands in Waziristan and have killed civilians in strikes, as in Tirah in 2025. In 2007 the army stormed Lal Masjid and the Jamia Hafsa madrasa in Islamabad.
15 RecordsAfghanistan
Afghanistan's communist government crushed the 1979 Herat uprising and massacred the men of Kerala in Kunar, and during the Soviet occupation of 1979–1989 an estimated 562,000 to 2 million Afghan civilians were killed and 5.5–6.2 million fled the country. After the US-led invasion in 2001, surrendered prisoners died in containers at Dasht-e-Leili, and thousands were held without charge at Bagram and other bases, where former detainees describe torture. UNAMA attributes 8,617 civilian deaths in 2009–2020 to Afghan and international pro-government forces, from airstrikes, ground fighting and night raids, alongside killings such as Kunduz 2009, Narang, Panjwai and those found by Australia's Brereton inquiry. Since late 2025 Pakistani air strikes have hit Afghan villages and a Kabul hospital, displacing nearly 100,000 people.
18 RecordsAfrica (Sahel, Central & East)
In the Sahel, the armies of Mali and Burkina Faso, with Russian Wagner fighters in Mali and VDP militias in Burkina Faso, have executed hundreds of civilians in counterterrorism operations, most often ethnic Fulani (Peuhl) Muslims: at least 300 and by UN count over 500 at Moura in 2022, 223 at Nondin and Soro in 2024, more than 130 around Solenzo in 2025. In the Central African Republic in 2013–2015, anti-balaka militias massacred Muslims, drove tens of thousands out of Bangui and the west, destroyed about 400 mosques and forced some returnees to renounce Islam. In Nigeria the army killed more than 340 Shia Muslims of the Islamic Movement in Zaria in December 2015, and the movement was banned in 2019. In Ethiopia, Muslim protest leaders were jailed under terrorism law, mosques were demolished around Addis Ababa in 2023 and mourners were attacked in Gondar in 2022; Eritrea jailed the leaders of an Islamic school in 2017. Kenya's Wagalla massacre of 1984 killed hundreds to thousands of ethnic Somali men.
51 RecordsSouth & Southeast Asia
In 1971 the Pakistan Army and allied militias killed Bengali civilians, mostly Muslims, across East Pakistan, from Operation Searchlight in Dhaka to the killing of intellectuals in December; estimates range from 300,000 to 3 million. In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge (1975–79) banned Islam, destroyed mosques and killed tens of thousands of Cham Muslims; the UN-backed court found genocide of the Cham in 2018. In the southern Philippines Moro Muslims were killed at Jabidah, Manili, Tacub and Malisbong, and military bombing destroyed much of Marawi in 2017. In southern Thailand soldiers stormed Krue Se mosque and 78 Malay Muslim detainees died in army trucks at Tak Bai in 2004, with no one punished. In Sri Lanka Muslims were massacred in mosques and expelled from the North in 1990, attacked by Buddhist nationalist mobs in 2014, 2018 and 2019, and forced to cremate their COVID-19 dead. Bangladesh's own governments later disappeared critics and shot protesters, from Shapla Chattar in 2013 to July 2024.
38 RecordsCanada, Australia & New Zealand
Mass-casualty attacks on Muslims at prayer and in the street, such as Christchurch 2019, Quebec City 2017 and London, Ontario 2021.
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