Pew Research Examines Global Restrictions on Religion

By Derek Welch --
27 Jun 2016 --

82 countries had instances of terrorism related to religion in 2014, but restrictions on religion went down.

The latest report which analyzes data from 2014 shows that there is a modest decrease of both social hostilities and government restriction imposed on religion in the 2013 to 2014 period. This happened even when there was a spurt in religion-linked terrorism.

Pew Research Examines Global Restrictions on Religion[/tweetthis]

Data related to religious restrictions has been tracked by Pew Research Center from 2007. The study encompassed almost 200 nations and territories. The end result comes in the form of yearly reports. These reports analyze religion linked social hostilities. Restrictions imposed by governments on religion are also noted.

When it comes to the 198 countries that were part of the study, 24 percent had high or extremely high restrictions imposed by their governments in 2014, a decline from 28 percent in 2013. Similar declines were observed in those countries where there were high or extremely high social hostilities which involved religion. It went down to 23 percent from 27 percent. This is the second successive year the number of nations with this kind of religious restrictions had registered a decline. These come post three years of continuous increases.

Religion-linked terrorism went up in 2014, with a total of 82 countries suffering from this particular nature of danger. There were 73 countries in the preceding two year period (2013 and 2012). These activities had the consequence of death or grave injury in 60 countries- a rise from 51 reported in 2013. The largest chunk of terrorist activities was reported from the Middle East and North Africa. These two regions suffer from countries suffering from religion linked terrorism to the tune of 90 percent when compared to the other five regions. The largest increase in religion-related terrorism was reported by the Asia Pacific region. This region also witnessed the largest increase in share of countries which suffered from religion linked terrorism- a rise from the 36 percent in 2013 to the 44 percent in 2014.

The rise in number of countries with religion linked terrorist activity, frequently counted as social hostility in this particular study, was balanced by decreases seen in a number nations which experienced other kinds of social hostilities. All of these involved religion. To give an example, there was a noticeable decline in the number of nations where individuals were displaced or assaulted from homes as a retaliatory punishment for religious activities considered threatening or offensive to the majority faith in their nation, state or province.