Only one-in-ten Chinese adults formally identify with a religion, but surveys indicate that religion plays a much bigger role in China when the definition is widened to include questions on spirituality, customs and traditional beliefs.
Pew Research’s fourth major report on global restrictions on religion finds that the share of countries with high or very high restrictions on religion rose from 37% in 2010 to 40% in 2011. The Middle East and North Africa continued to have the highest levels of restrictions in the year when much of the Arab Spring uprisings occurred, with social hostilities involving religion increasing markedly and government restrictions remaining high.
A country-by-country analysis of data from more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers finds that 84% of adults and children around the globe are religiously affiliated. The study also finds that the median age of two major groups – Muslims (23 years) and Hindus (26) – is younger than the world’s overall population (28), while Jews have the highest median age (36).
George Mason University Professor Peter Mandaville, Dilwar Hussain of the Islamic Foundation, and Maha Azzam of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House discussed key findings of a Pew Forum study containing profiles of some of the oldest, largest and most influential Muslim groups – from the Muslim Brotherhood to mystical Sufi orders and networks of religious scholars.
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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