Between mid-2009 and mid-2010, religious restrictions rose not only in countries that began the year with high or very high restrictions, such as Indonesia and Nigeria, but also in many countries that began with low or moderate restrictions, such as Switzerland and the United States. The report looks at restrictions due to government actions as well as acts of violence and intimidation by private individuals, organizations and social groups.
Restrictions on religious beliefs and practices rose in 23 of the world’s 198 countries (12%), decreased in 12 countries (6%) and remained essentially unchanged in 163 countries (82%) between mid-2006 and mid-2009, a new Pew Forum report shows. More than 2.2 billion people – nearly a third of the world’s population – live in the 23 countries with increasing government restrictions or social hostilities involving religion.
A new Pew Forum report on the size, distribution and growth of the global Muslim population finds that the world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35% in the next 20 years, but it is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades.
Pew Research Center Ten years ago, the U.S. Congress launched a debate on U.S. international religious freedom policy that ultimately resulted in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Foreign policy actors continue to debate how religious freedom – and religion itself – should be factored into U.S. foreign policy. Has the State Department interpreted […]
Washington, D.C. Europeans and Americans approach the relationship between church and state differently. European churches, for instance, often receive official sanction and substantial financial support from the government. In the United States, on the other hand, the government recognizes no church, and whatever aid it provides is usually indirect and substantially more limited. Even ideas […]
Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2007 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Ray Takeyh, a leading expert on Iran and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, shed light on the complex and diffuse […]
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