How many people have been killed in the name of religion throughout history?

Answer: almost 200,000,000. You may have heard the saying that “religion is the cause of all wars,” and while this may be an exaggeration, it turns out there may be some truth to it.

Throughout history, millions of people have been killed in the name of religion. In this article, we will take a deep dive into just how many people have died in the name of religion throughout history.

• The Crusades: 6,000,000

• Thirty Years War: 11,500,000

• French Wars of Religion: 4,000,000

• Second Sudanese Civil War: 2,000,000

• Lebanese Civil War: 250,000

• Muslim Conquests of India: 80,000,000

• Congolese Genocide (King Leopold II): 13,000,000

• Armenian Genocide: 1,500,000

• Rwandan Genocide: 800,000

• Eighty Years' War: 1,000,000

• Nigerian Civil War: 1,000,000

• Great Peasants' Revolt: 250,000

• First Sudanese Civil War: 1,000,000

• Jewish Diaspora (Not Including the Holocaust): 1,000,000

• The Holocaust (Jewish and Homosexual Deaths): 6,500,000

• Islamic Terrorism Since 2000: 150,000

• Iraq War: 500,000

• US Western Expansion (Justified by "Manifest Destiny"):20,000,000

• Atlantic Slave Trade (Justified by Christianity): 14,000,000

• Aztec Human Sacrifice: 80,000

• AIDS deaths in Africa largely due to opposition to condoms: 30,000,000

• Spanish Inquisition: 5,000

• TOTAL: 195,035,000 deaths in the name of religion… and counting.

Religion has been at the center of many conflicts throughout human history. To understand just how much death has been caused by religion over time, we must look back to ancient times. During these historical periods, people were often more likely to die due to religious conflicts than any other type of conflict. According to historians, some estimates suggest that as many as 2 million people died during various religious wars between 600 BCE and 600 CE alone.