Of course it's religious persecution when Sunni Muslims do it to to Shi'ites or the other way round, or when It's Protestants and Catholics, and I have never heard of anyone who would deny it, and it's a horrible things.

But when we focus attention on one thing it is quite unjustifiable to assume we are denying that other things matter. "All this talk about religious persecution means you are denying the existence of ill treatment of people with disabilities/ genital mutilation of girls/ nuclear proliferation"...