Government Restrictions on Religion
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The Government Restrictions Index (GRI) measures limits imposed by
governments on religious beliefs and practices. The 10-point index is based on
20 questions used by the Pew Forum to gauge the extent to which governments at
any level – national, provincial or local – try to control religious groups or
individuals, prohibit conversions from one faith to another, limit preaching
and proselytizing, or otherwise hinder religious affiliation by means such as
registration requirements and fines. The questions seek to capture both
relatively straightforward efforts to restrict religion – for example, through a
nation’s constitution and laws – as well as efforts that are more indirect,
such as favoring certain religions by means of preferential funding. (For more
information on the index, see the Methodology. The questions are shown in the
Summary of Results. Details on how all 198 countries and
territories scored on each question are available online, in the Results by Country.)
The Pew Forum categorizes the levels of government restrictions by
percentiles. Countries with scores in the top 5% are categorized as “very
high.” The next highest 15% of scores are categorized as “high,” and the
following 20% are categorized as “moderate.” The bottom 60% of scores are
categorized as “low.” (For a complete list of countries in each category, see the Government Restrictions Index table.)
Situation as of Mid-2009
Overall, the study finds that during the period from
mid-2007 to mid-2009 government restrictions on religion were high or very high
in 42 countries, about one-in-five worldwide.4
The 10 countries that had very high restrictions as of mid-2009 were Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan,
China, Maldives, Malaysia, Burma (Myanmar), Eritrea and Indonesia. Government
restrictions were in the moderate range in 39 countries. A much larger number
of countries – 117 – had low levels of government restrictions.5 But because many of the more
restrictive countries (including China and India) are very populous, more than
half of the world’s population (59%) was living with high or very high government
restrictions on religion as of mid-2009.
As noted in the December 2009 baseline report, the
mathematical presentation of scores for individual countries needs to be kept
in context. The Pew Forum has deliberately chosen not to attach numerical rankings
from No. 1 to No. 198 both because there are many tie scores and because the
differences between the scores of countries that are close to each other on the
index may not be important.
Overall Changes in Government Restrictions
Comparing
the Pew Forum’s index scores for the baseline period (mid-2006 to mid-2008)
with the scores for the latest period (mid-2007 to mid-2009), the study finds
that government restrictions on religion rose substantially in 14 countries and
decreased substantially in eight countries. The scores stayed roughly the same
in most (176) countries. (As noted in the Executive Summary, the study refers
to a change in a country’s score as “substantial” only if it is at least 1.5
standard deviations above or below the mean amount of change among all 198
countries or territories. The change also had to be in the same direction over
the two periods studied, meaning that it had to rise or fall both in the period
from mid-2006 to mid-2008 and in the period from mid-2007 to mid-2009. For more
details, see Methodology.)
In
general, most of the increases in government restrictions occurred in countries
that already had very high, high or moderate levels of government restrictions.
Most of the decreases were in countries that already scored low. Among the 40
countries that had high or very high government restrictions as of mid-2008,
restrictions increased substantially in seven and decreased substantially in
one. Among the 40 countries that started out with moderate government
restrictions, there were substantial increases in six, and none had substantial
decreases. In contrast, among the 118 countries that started out with low
restrictions, the level of government restrictions decreased in seven and
increased in just one. This suggests that there might be a gradual polarization
taking place in which countries that are relatively high in government
restrictions are getting higher, while those that are relatively low are stable
or getting lower.
Looking at all 198
countries and territories, the average score on the Government Restrictions
Index rose from 2.6 for the period ending in mid-2008 to 2.7 for the period
ending in mid-2009. The biggest increases were among the countries that started
with high or very high government restrictions. There was no change in the
average index score among the countries that initially had moderate or low government
restrictions.
Changes in
Some Key Types of Government Restrictions
During the most recent period studied (mid-2007 to mid-2009), 131
countries (or about two-thirds) interfered with the worship or other religious
practices of one or more groups in at least a few cases, up from 128 countries
in the period from mid-2006 to mid-2008. (See Summary of Results, GRI Q. 4.)
Such interference included instances when local officials refused to grant or
made it difficult to obtain zoning permits to build places of worship, which
happened in countries ranging from Switzerland to Swaziland. It also included
more widespread instances of interference. Indeed, governments in 50 countries
(25%) prohibited the religious or worship practices of one or more religious
groups as a general policy. This type of restriction was up sharply from the
period ending in mid-2008, when 38 countries (19%) fell into this category.
In 40 countries, officials at some level of government
banned a particular religious group, up from 38 countries in the period from mid-2006 to mid-2008. (See
Summary of Results, GRI Q. 16.) In more than half
of the countries (28), government officials cited security concerns as the
rationale for banning the group[s]. (In some cases, they cited non-security
reasons as well.) The government of Tajikistan, for example, banned religious
groups that it considered “extremist” organizations, including the Islamist
movement known as Hizb ut-Tahrir (or “Party of Liberation”).6 In some instances, countries banned groups that they
considered to be cults. In April 2009, for example, the Honduran government
banned the Puerto Rican religious group Creciendo en Gracia, whose leader
claims to be the Antichrist and speaks out against traditional organized
religion. Jehovah’s Witnesses continued to be banned in several countries,
including Syria and Singapore.
There was a
notable increase in the number of countries that regulate religious symbols,
such as head or body coverings for women or facial hair for men. The number of
countries that had such restrictions rose from 42 as of mid-2008 to 53 as of
mid-2009. (See Summary of Results, GRI Q. 10.) There was a particularly sharp
increase in the number of countries that regulate face, head or body coverings
for women, which rose from 31 to 42, a 35% increase. In Canada, for instance,
an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled in May 2009 that Muslim women do not have
a blanket right to wear a face-covering veil (the niqab) while testifying in
court, saying judges should decide this on a case-by-case basis. Several
countries, including Oman and Algeria, appeared to step up their enforcement of
restrictions on wearing face-covering veils. In Oman, women are permitted to
wear the hijab (headscarf) in passport and other official photographs, but they
are not allowed to wear veils that fully cover the face in official photos.
Algeria allows female government employees to wear headscarves or crosses at
work, but it forbids them from wearing the niqab.
In
France – which in 2004 banned the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols,
including head scarves and large crosses, in public schools – some politicians
began calling for the establishment of a commission to study the effect of
head-to-toe burqas and face-covering Islamic veils on French society. French
President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared to endorse the idea in his first state of
the nation address on June 22, 2009, saying “the burqa is not welcome in
France.” (The French Parliament voted to ban burqas and full-face veils in
public places in 2010, outside the period covered in this report; the ban took
effect in April 2011.)
The
number of countries where the government limits religious literature or
broadcasting rose from 80 as of mid-2008 to 87 as of mid-2009. (See Summary of
Results, GRI Q. 8.) In Germany, for instance, the Federal Ministry of the
Interior announced on Oct.12, 2008, that it was banning broadcasts of Al-Manar
TV, a television station based in Beirut, Lebanon. The German ministry said it
banned the broadcasts because they contained anti-Semitic propaganda. But
governments sometimes restricted religious broadcasting or literature in less
direct ways. In April 2009, for example, the Catholic Church reportedly was
pressured by the Zambian government to relieve a priest of his duties after he
strongly criticized the government on his popular radio program.
Certain government
policies that on the surface appear to be neutral can, in practice, result in
restrictions on religion. For example, most countries or territories (181
during the period ending in mid-2009) required religious groups to register
with the government for one purpose or another, such as to obtain tax-exempt status.
(See Summary of Results, GRI Q. 18.) But these registration requirements
resulted in major problems for, or outright discrimination against, certain
groups in 86 countries as of mid-2009, up from 79 countries in the period
ending in mid-2008. For example, because the Serbian government did not allow
some religious groups to register – including the League of Baptists, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, the Hare Krishna movement, the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement
and several evangelical Protestant churches – they could not air programming on
public media; the code of conduct of the state’s Republic Broadcasting Agency
restricts public media access to registered religious groups.
There was no major change in the number of countries that allow foreign
missionaries to operate (see Summary of Results, GRI Q. 9), allow proselytizing
(see Summary of Results, GRI Q. 6)
or allow public preaching by religious groups (see Summary of Results, GRI Q.
5). But one or more of these activities was limited by governments in 110 of
the 198 countries and territories (56%) during the period from mid-2007 to
mid-2009.
Countries with Substantial Increases
in Government Restrictions
Over
the entire three-year period covered in this study (mid-2006 to mid-2009),
government restrictions on religion increased substantially in 14 of the 198
countries or territories. (See Executive Summary for a definition of
substantial change.)
Seven
of the 14 countries already had high or very high government restrictions.
Egypt and Malaysia had very high restrictions to begin with, while Algeria,
Libya, Tajikistan, Syria and Yemen had high levels of restrictions. By
contrast, government restrictions increased substantially in only one country
where restrictions were low to begin with – Hong Kong. Despite the increase,
Hong Kong remained in the low-government-restrictions category as of mid-2009. (See the list of all countries on the Government Restrictions Index table.)
The
level of government restrictions in Egypt was increasing well before the recent
uprising that led to the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in
February 2011. During the period ending in mid-2009, the government maintained
a longstanding ban on the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential Islamic
organization.7 Although some of the group’s activities tacitly were
tolerated by the government, members of the Brotherhood reportedly were subject
to arbitrary detention and other pressure. The Egyptian government also
continued to discriminate against Christians in public-sector hiring, including
staff appointments at public universities, and continued to bar Christians from
studying at Al-Azhar University, a publicly funded institution widely known
as a seat of Islamic learning.
Many
of the restrictions in Egypt were directed at Coptic Christians, who form one
of the largest Christian populations in the Middle East and North Africa.8 At the local level, government officials often tried
to prevent Coptic Christians from improving existing churches or constructing
new ones. Officials in the Arbaeen District of the Assiut governorate in Upper
Egypt, for example, have long refused to grant a building permit for a new
Coptic church even though Egypt’s president and the Ministry of the Interior
approved the project many years ago.
Government
restrictions also increased substantially in Malaysia, which, like Egypt,
already had very high restrictions to begin with. Although the country’s
constitution recognizes freedom of religion, Malaysia restricts the observance
of Islamic beliefs and practices that do not conform to Sunni Islam. Indeed,
the Malaysian government monitors more than 50 Muslim groups that it considers
unorthodox, including the Ahmadiyya movement, which some Muslims view as
heretical. In some instances, the government sends people who practice
“deviant” forms of Islam to religious “rehabilitation” centers. According to
the State Department’s 2009 International Religious Freedom report, “The
[g]overnment denies individuals the freedom to leave such centers until they
complete the program.” The report says the Malaysian government did not release
statistics on the number of people sentenced to religious rehabilitation
centers during the reporting period.
Five
of the countries with substantial increases had high government restrictions to
begin with: Algeria, Libya, Tajikistan, Syria and Yemen. The increase in
restrictions in these countries often involved religious minorities and/or
minority sects of the country’s majority faith. In Yemen, for instance, both
Baha’is and Christians were subject to increased government harassment,
including imprisonment. Several Yemenis who had converted from Islam to
Christianity were arrested in the cities of Sana’a and Hodeida in 2008. They
reportedly were arrested for promoting Christianity and distributing Bibles
rather than for apostasy, which is a crime punishable by death in Yemen.
Members of Yemen’s small Jewish population were threatened on a number of
occasions and did not always receive protection from the government. For
example, after a prominent member of the Jewish community in Reyda was killed
in December 2008, the government “appeared unwilling or unable to increase
security for the remaining Jewish population,” the State Department reported.
In
Tajikistan, the government in the spring of 2009 arrested hundreds of members
of the Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jama’at, saying the group
represented a potential threat to the country’s stability and security. In June
2009, the government also detained 40 people suspected of being members of the
Salafi school of Islam, which the government had formally banned in January
2009.9 The arrests
and detentions were supported by a 2009 religion law that expanded government
controls over religious groups. Among other things, the new law made it more
difficult for religious groups to comply with the government’s registration
requirements.
Six
countries with substantial increases in government restrictions started out with
moderate levels of restrictions: Somalia, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, France, Serbia and
Uganda. In Uganda, for example, police in February 2008 detained the head of
the New Malta Jerusalem Church, Severino Lukoya, and three of his employees for
operating an unregistered church. Lukoya is the father of a former rebel
leader, and the government has cited national security concerns as the reason
for prohibiting the church from registering.
In
several countries with moderate levels of restrictions, governments appeared to
step up restrictions that were already in place. Qatar, for example, reportedly
began enforcing restrictions on the length and content of sermons in mosques in
order to monitor content that might incite listeners to violence.
Government
restrictions also increased substantially in Hong Kong, which overall still has
low government restrictions on religion. For example, practitioners of the
spiritual discipline known as Falun Gong were often turned down by Hong Kong
authorities when they asked to use public facilities or spaces for their
functions, even though other religious groups were routinely granted such
permission. Falun Gong practitioners also reportedly were attacked by security
personnel employed by the liaison office of China’s central government during
an August 2008 protest. And several people with ties to Falun Gong were
prevented from entering the territory, including a U.S. citizen, Leeshai
Lemish, who said he was denied entry on July 27, 2008. News reports suggested
that Lemish was denied entry because he was serving as a translator and
assistant to someone who was researching the persecution of Falun Gong.
Countries with Substantial Decreases in Government
Restrictions
Government
restrictions on religion decreased substantially in eight countries from
mid-2006 to mid-2009. Most of the countries with substantial decreases in
restrictions (seven of the eight countries) had low levels of government
restrictions to begin with. Only one of the eight countries – Greece – started
out with high government restrictions.
The
decline in government restrictions in Greece was not the result of any changes
to the country’s laws or policies. Rather, there were fewer reports of
restrictive actions by various levels of the government. For example, while
Greece continued to restrict proselytizing, there were fewer reported cases
where the police detained people for proselytizing. Minority religious groups
in Greece continued to face administrative hurdles when trying to obtain
permits to operate houses of worship. But during the latest reporting period,
they faced fewer hurdles than they had in previous years.
In
the seven countries that initially had low government restrictions, there were
fewer reports of attempts to restrict the activities of certain sects or
religions. For instance, during the period covered by this study, the attorney
general of Guinea Bissau overturned efforts to ban the Ahmadiyya Muslim sect,
declaring that the ban had no legal basis. In the Pacific island nation of
Nauru, ministers and missionaries from minority Christian groups that once were
banned from the country – including Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses – have been
able to operate with less hindrance in recent years.
Restrictions
on public preaching decreased in three of the eight countries with substantial
declines in government restrictions: Nauru, Togo and Nicaragua. None of the
eight countries had an increase on this measure. In Catholic-majority
Nicaragua, for example, the government stopped enforcing a 2006 law – known as
the “noise law” – that some evangelical Christian groups claimed was
restricting their ability to organize outdoor worship services.
Religious
groups faced fewer problems registering in four of the eight countries with
substantial declines in government restrictions: Guinea Bissau, Republic of
Macedonia, Timor-Leste and Togo. The government of Togo, for instance, did not
reject any group’s registration application in the latest period studied.
Use of Government Force against Religious Groups or
Individuals
One
measure included in the Government Restrictions Index is the level of force
governments used against religious groups or individuals. This measure tallies
the number of countries in which individuals were killed, physically abused,
imprisoned, detained or displaced from their homes for religion-related
reasons. It also counts incidents in which individuals had their personal or
religious property damaged or destroyed as a result of government actions. The
number of countries in which governments used at least some measure of force
against religious groups or individuals rose from 91 (46%) in the period ending
in mid-2008 to 101 (51%) in the period ending in mid-2009. (See Summary of
Results, GRI Q. 19.)
Although
scores on the Government Restrictions Index were calculated based on the number
of cases of government force in each country, the Pew Forum coders also
examined the different types of force governments used. For instance,
government force against religious groups led to individuals being killed in 24
countries (12%) in the period ending in mid-2009, about the same number of
countries as in the previous reporting period.
In
China, for example, police in Beijing stopped musician Yu Zhou and his wife,
poet Xu Na, for speeding on Jan. 26, 2008. After finding Falun Gong materials
in their car, the police detained the couple. Yu died in custody 11 days later.
He was reportedly tortured, but the police refused to allow an autopsy. His
wife was sentenced to three years in prison. In Laos, a Christian man died in
July 2008 in the village of Katan in the province of Salavan after authorities
reportedly forced him to drink alcohol. His relatives were later fined for
conducting a Christian burial service. In
Iran, security officers in Isfahan Province on July 17, 2008, raided the home
of two Iranian Christians, who later died of injuries inflicted during the
raid. And in Syria, human rights activists said at least nine Islamist inmates
were killed by prison guards during riots at Sednaya Military Prison near
Damascus in July 2008.
Detentions
or imprisonments for religious reasons were reported in 78 countries (39%)
during the most recent period studied, up from 70 countries (35%) in the period
ending in mid-2008. In the East African country of Eritrea, for example, police
arrested 22 Jehovah’s Witnesses on June 28, 2009, for holding an unapproved worship
service in the city of Asmara. Jehovah’s Witnesses are frequently imprisoned or
detained in Eritrea for refusing to do compulsory military service, which is
against their religious beliefs. In Afghanistan, where misinterpretation of
Islam is a punishable offense, two people were sentenced by a Kabul court in
September 2008 to 20 years in prison for publishing a Dari-language translation
of the Koran that did not include the parallel Arabic verses for comparison
purposes. The court’s decision affirmed arguments made by religious scholars in
Afghanistan that the translation misinterpreted verses in the Koran about
alcohol, begging, homosexuality and adultery.
Religious
groups or individuals had their personal or religious property damaged or
destroyed as a result of government actions in 50 countries (25%) in the period
ending in mid-2009, up from 29 countries (15%) as of mid-2008. In Vinh Long,
Vietnam, for instance, the government tore down the Catholic convent of the
Sisters of the Congregation of St. Paul of Chartre in January 2009 and
converted the property into a park. In the Iranian city of Isfahan, government
authorities used bulldozers to raze the house of worship of a group of Gonabadi
(or Sufi) dervishes in February 2009.10 The authorities arrested all of the Sufi Muslims who
were present and destroyed all Sufi books and publications on the premises. In
Brazil, the municipal government of Salvador de Bahia in 2008 destroyed an
Afro-Brazilian Candomblé temple that had been illegally constructed on public
land. After reviewing the case, the mayor of Salvador publicly apologized,
dismissed the official responsible and had the temple rebuilt.
Tens
of thousands of people remained displaced from their homes at least in part
because of government policies toward religious groups. Displacements were
reported in 45 countries (23%) in the period ending in mid-2009, up from 38
countries (19%) as of mid-2008. In some cases, the number of people displaced
reflected the continuing effects of earlier conflicts. In India, for example,
an estimated 55,000 Kashmiri families, most of them Hindu, remained in refugee
camps as a result of the long-standing conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. Many
Hindus reportedly were reluctant to return to their homes because they were afraid
they would not be protected by the police, who are primarily Muslim.
Constitutional Protections for Religious Freedom
Nearly
all of the 198 countries included in this study either call for freedom of
religion in their constitutions or basic laws (143 countries) or protect at
least some religious practices (an additional 48 countries). But not all
governments fully respect the religious rights written into their laws. More
than half of the countries (111, or 56%) include stipulations in their constitution
or basic laws that appear to substantially contradict the concept of religious
freedom. Afghanistan’s Constitution, for instance, appears to protect its
citizens’ right to choose and practice a religion other than Islam. However,
the constitution also stipulates that “no law can be contrary to the sacred
religion of Islam” and instructs judges to rule according to sharia law if no
specific Afghan law applies to a case.
Seven
countries – Algeria, Eritrea, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Yemen
– do not include any provisions for religious freedom in their constitutions or
basic laws.11 The Algerian Constitution, for example, establishes
Islam as the state religion and forbids practices that are contrary to Islamic
ethics.
There
appears to be at least some relationship between constitutional protections for
religious freedom and overall changes in government restrictions on religion.
Among the countries with the least robust constitutional protections for
religious freedom – that is, countries whose constitutions contain one or more
substantial contradictions concerning religious freedom or provide no
protection for it at all – index scores increased in 11 and decreased in only
two (more than a five-fold difference). In contrast, among the countries whose
constitutions provide for religious freedom without substantial contradictions
(including those with limited qualifications), index scores increased in three
countries and decreased in six (a two-fold difference).
More
specifically, among the countries whose constitutions or basic laws do not
provide for religious freedom, government restrictions on religion
substantially increased in three (Algeria, Libya and Yemen) and did not
decrease in any. In the 111 countries that provide for religious freedom but
have substantial contradictions in their constitutions or basic laws (such as
limiting religious freedom in order to protect “public morals” or making the
nation’s laws conform to one particular religion), government restrictions
substantially increased in eight countries (Somalia, Syria, France, Malaysia,
Egypt, Qatar, Hong Kong and Serbia) and substantially decreased in two
countries (Greece and Nauru).
However,
the pattern is reversed among the 41 countries whose constitutions or basic
laws provide for religious freedom without qualification or contradiction.
Among these countries, government restrictions decreased in three countries
(Timor-Leste, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Macedonia) and increased in
one (Kyrgyzstan). This pattern is also seen, though more faintly, among the 39
countries whose constitutions or basic laws provide for religious freedom but
include limited qualifications, such as the right to limit religious freedom to
protect “public order.” Restrictions decreased in three of these countries
(Togo, Guinea Bissau and Nicaragua) and increased in two of them (Uganda and
Tajikistan). (The level of government
restrictions stayed roughly the same in the vast majority of cases.)
Government Restrictions on Religion by Region
There
are major differences among the five regions of the world – Asia-Pacific,
Middle East-North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the Americas – when it
comes to government restrictions on religion. On average, government
restrictions are highest in the Middle East-North Africa. The median score on
the Government Restrictions Index for the 20 countries in the region rose from
5.0 as of mid-2008 to 5.4 as of mid-2009. Sixteen of the 20 countries in the
region (80%) had high or very high government restrictions as of mid-2009, and
no country had low government restrictions. Six countries in the region (Egypt,
Algeria, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Qatar) had substantial increases in government
restrictions from mid-2006 to mid-2009, and no country had a substantial
decrease.
The
situation in the Asia-Pacific region was more mixed. Overall, the region’s
median score on the Government Restrictions Index was 3.7 as of mid-2009, up
from 3.3 as of mid-2008. Nineteen of the 51 countries in the region (37%) had
high or very high restrictions as of mid-2009, while 23 countries (45%) had low
government restrictions. Government restrictions increased substantially in
four countries in the region (Hong Kong, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia and Tajikistan)
and decreased substantially in two (Nauru and Timor-Leste).
Seven
of the 10 countries in the world with very high government restrictions as of
mid-2009 were in the Asia-Pacific region: Burma (Myanmar), China, Indonesia,
Iran, Malaysia, Maldives and Uzbekistan. Twelve of the 32 countries in the
world with high government restrictions also were in this region (Afghanistan,
Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, India, Laos, Pakistan, Tajikistan,
Turkey, Turkmenistan and Vietnam). At the same time, some of the least
restrictive governments in the world also were found in the Asia-Pacific
region, including Japan, Taiwan and Australia.
Europe’s
median index score for the period ending in mid-2009 (1.9) was slightly higher
than its median score for the period ending in mid-2008 (1.8). Europe’s median
score also remained higher than the scores for sub-Saharan Africa or the
Americas. This was due in part to former Communist countries in Europe that
have replaced state atheism with state-favored religions that are accorded
special protections or privileges. All of the European countries with high
government restrictions as of mid-2009 were in the East, including Belarus,
Bulgaria, Moldova and Russia. (No European country had very high restrictions.)
France and Greece had the highest levels of government restrictions in Western
Europe, and both fell in the moderate category. France and Serbia were the only
European countries to have substantial increases in government restrictions
from mid-2006 to mid-2009.
The
median level of government restrictions in sub-Saharan Africa is the
next-to-lowest of the world’s five major regions. Overall, the median level of
government restrictions in sub-Saharan Africa dropped from 1.4 in the period
ending in mid-2008 to 1.2 in the period ending in mid-2009. Government
restrictions in the region decreased substantially in three countries
(Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Togo) and increased substantially in two
(Somalia and Uganda). Eritrea had the highest level of restrictions in the
region; it was the only sub-Saharan African country with very high restrictions
as of mid-2009.
Of
the five regions, the Americas had the lowest median level of government
restrictions on religion. Nearly 90% of the countries in the region (31 of the
35 countries) had low government restrictions as of mid-2009. Four countries in
the region (Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and Costa Rica) were in the moderate
category. No country in the region had a substantial increase in restrictions
from mid-2006 to mid-2009, and restrictions decreased substantially in
Nicaragua. Cuba, which continued to have the highest level of government
restrictions in the Americas, had a slight but not substantial drop in its
score. Canada, the United States and Brazil all continued to have relatively
low government restrictions on religion.
Footnotes:
4 Answers to Questions 1 and 2 in the
Government Restrictions Index, which deal with constitutional provisions, were
recoded for the period from mid-2006 to mid-2008 to match the coding
conventions used from mid-2007 to mid-2009. (For question wording, see Summary
of Results.) After the recoding, 40 countries scored in the top 20% on the GRI
as of mid-2008 (meaning they had high or very high restrictions) rather than
the 43 countries that were listed in the December 2009 baseline report. See
Methodology for more details. (return to text)
5 Because the Pew Forum categorized the
levels of government restrictions by percentiles, the variance in the number of
countries at each level from one period to another is not a meaningful one. The
differences reflect how many tie scores there are at different break points.
Without the tie scores, the number of countries in each category would be the
same from period to period (e.g., the top 20% of scores would equal 40
countries, the bottom 60% of scores would equal 119 countries, etc.). (return to text)
6 For more information on Hizb
ut-Tahrir, see the Pew Forum’s September 2010 report Muslim Networks and Movements in
Western Europe. (return to text)
7 For more information on the Muslim
Brotherhood, see the Pew Forum’s September 2010 report Muslim Networks and Movements in
Western Europe. (return to text)
8 The best available census and survey
data indicate that Christians now number roughly 5% of the Egyptian population,
or about 4 million people. See the Pew Research Center’s “Ask the Expert” entry
for Feb. 16, 2011. (return to text)
9 For more information on the Tablighi
Jama’at and Salafism, see the Pew Forum’s September 2010 report Muslim Networks and Movements in Western
Europe. (return to text)
10 For more information on Sufism, see
the Pew Forum’s September 2010 report Muslim Networks and Movements in
Western Europe. (return to text)
11 The Eritrean Constitution that was
ratified by the National Assembly in 1997 provides for religious freedom, but
the government has not yet implemented the constitution. Therefore, there is no
effective constitutional protection for religious freedom in Eritrea. (return to text)