Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Going It Alone in Tough Times James M. Lindsay and Parke T. Nicholson Council on Foreign Relations Tough economic times have always led the American public to turn inward rather than look beyond America’s shores. The Great Depression sparked a surge of isolationism that only ceased after Pearl Harbor. The stagflation of the 1970s combined […]
Muslims living in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes 61 countries and territories, constitute 62% of all Muslims worldwide. The six Asian countries with the largest Muslim populations are: Indonesia (203 million), Pakistan (174 million), India (161 million), Bangladesh (145 million), Iran (74 million) and Turkey (74 million). Together these six countries are home to about […]
Restrictions on religion can result not only from the actions of governments but also from acts of violence and intimidation by private individuals, organizations or social groups. The Pew Forum’s Social Hostilities Index is a measure of concrete, hostile actions that effectively hinder the religious activities of the targeted individuals or groups. An absence of […]
Last week, for the first time in two months, the most discussed news story on Twitter was something other than unrest in Iran. Instead, it was Twitter itself and the outage the site faced on August 6. In the blogosphere, attention was focused on an unusual lawsuit. And on YouTube, the top videos involved rising political temperatures in the dog days of summer.
More than half a century ago, the United Nations affirmed the principle of religious freedom in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, defining it as “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” For just as long, journalists and human rights groups have reported on persecution of minority faiths, outbreaks of sectarian violence […]
Mexican attitudes toward the United States have grown much more positive over the last year. In the current survey, 69% of Mexicans express a favorable view of the U.S., compared with 47% in 2008. Positive opinions of the U.S. are now as prevalent as they were at the beginning of this decade. Mexicans are now […]
Last week, the health care debate remained the lead story as talk hosts argued about whether the confrontations between protestors and politicians were genuine or choreographed. And thanks to a dramatic prisoner release in North Korea, a former president made almost as much news as the current one.