John L. Allen, Jr. argues that “the world is witnessing the rise of an entire new generation of Christian martyrs.” He believes we don’t pay much attention to suffering of these Christians because, in some cases, we don’t recognize the religious backdrop to atrocities:
Discussion is sometimes limited by an overly narrow conception of what constitutes ‘religious violence’. If a female catechist is killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, because she’s persuading young people to stay out of militias and criminal gangs, one might say that’s a tragedy but not martyrdom, because her assailants weren’t driven by hatred of the Christian faith. Yet the crucial point isn’t just what was in the mind of her killers, but what was in the heart of that catechist, who knowingly put her life on the line to serve the gospel. To make her attackers’ motives the only test, rather than her own, is to distort reality.
The Dish 