Genocide

Derived from genos (race) and cide (to kill).

A term created by Raphael Lemkin in the mid-1940s that refers to the planned, systematic extermination of an entire ethnic, national, racial, or religious group.

Most genocides in the 20th and 21st century have had a strong religious component. The murder of about 200,000 Muslims by Serbian Orthodox Christians during the 1990s is the most serious religiously-motivated genocide in recent years.