Religious Persecution: First Freedom Under Global Siege
A mericans take religious liberty for granted. But four of five people around the world lack the freedom to worship and live faithfully. Even Americans cannot take their freedoms for granted.
The Pew Research Center, with Peter Henne as lead researcher, recently issued its latest study on religious liberty. The report makes for a sad read.
In some nations governments suppress the faithful. In other countries people make their societies unfriendly to minority beliefs, imposing a wide range of less formal sanctions, including murder.
The overall global environment to religious faith is hostile. Concluded the study:
"Restrictions on religion were high or very high in 39% of countries. Because some of these countries (like China and India) are very populous, about 5.5 billion people (77% of the world's population) were living in countries with a high or very high overall level of restrictions on religion in 2013, up from 76% in 2012 and 68% as of 2007."
Christians and Muslims, who make up the largest share of the world's population, are the most widely harassed faiths (in 102 and 99 countries, respectively)-in both cases, ironically, far more grievously in Muslim than Christian nations. Particularly worrisome has been the increase in anti-Semitism.
Noted Pew: "There has been a marked increase in the number of countries where Jews were harassed," to 77, a recent peak. The problem is more social than government, and is evident in 34 of 45 European nations.
In 2013, 18 nations were found to have "very high" levels of government restrictions. A Baker's Dozen of the chief miscreants were Muslim states: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan.
Four were classically authoritarian and/or Communist/post-Communist (so were the three Central Asia nations listed previously): Burma, China, Eritrea, and Russia. The surprising outlier was Singapore, which bans particular sects, such as Jehovah's Witnesses. (North Korea could not be ranked due to a lack of data.)
Two countries moved up into the top category, Singapore and Turkey. Eight dropped out: Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, and Vietnam. The number of nations with high levels of persecution rose from 33 to 36.
There is substantial overlap between persecuting states and those with significant social hostilities, but also some notable differences. Seventeen make the disreputable very high antagonism category.
Nine are majority Muslim:
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/032015-744418-religious-freedom-at-risk-across-world.htm#ixzz3V09wAFYU
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