Do you have any other plausible explanations as to why people get persecuted?
I do. Because people tend to be tribalist assholes.
And you aren't being persecuted, Phat, any more than Faith is. Miriam Ibrahim, OK. Catholics under Cromwell or Cathars in France, check. But not you guys.
"The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails." H L Mencken