WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Even before the "Arab Spring" outbreak, North Africa and the Middle East led the world in religious hostility and restriction of religion, a new report says.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a demographic social science survey organization, said that as of mid-2010, before the outbreak of revolutions in the Mideast, the share of countries it regarded as having high or very high restrictions on religion rose from 31 percent at the end of 2009 to 37 percent in mid-2010.

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