In 2018, the global median level of government restrictions on religion – that is, laws, policies and actions by officials that impinge on religious beliefs and practices – continued to climb, reaching an all-time high since Pew Research Center began tracking these trends in 2007.

The year-over-year increase from 2017 to 2018 was relatively modest, but it contributed to a substantial rise in government restrictions on religion over more than a decade. In 2007, the first year of the study, the global median score on the Government Restrictions Index (a 10-point scale based on 20 indicators) was 1.8. After some fluctuation in the early years, the median score has risen steadily since 2011 and now stands at 2.9 for 2018, the most recent full year for which data is available.

The increase in government restrictions reflects a wide variety of events around the world, including a rise from 2017 to 2018 in the number of governments using force – such as detentions and physical abuse – to coerce religious groups.

The total number of countries with “high” or “very high” levels of government restrictions has been mounting as well. Most recently, that number climbed from 52 countries (26% of the 198 countries and territories included in the study) in 2017 to 56 countries (28%) in 2018. The latest figures are close to the 2012 peak in the top two tiers of the Government Restrictions Index.

As of 2018, most of the 56 countries with high or very high levels of government restrictions on religion are in the Asia-Pacific region (25 countries, or half of all countries in that region) or the Middle East-North Africa region (18 countries, or 90% of all countries in the region).

Rising government restrictions in the Asia-Pacific region

Out of the five regions examined in the study, the Middle East and North Africa continued to have the highest median level of government restrictions in 2018 (6.2 out of 10). However, Asia and the Pacific had the largest increase in its median government restrictions score, rising from 3.8 in 2017 to 4.4 in 2018, partly because a greater number of governments in the region used force against religious groups, including property damage, detention, displacement, abuse and killings.

In total, 31 out of 50 countries (62%) in Asia and the Pacific experienced government use of force related to religion, up from 26 countries (52%) in 2017. The increase was concentrated in the category of “low levels” of government use of force (between one and nine incidents during the year). In 2018, 10 Asia-Pacific countries fell into this category, up from five the previous year. (For a full list of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, see Appendix C.)

In Armenia, for example, a prominent member of the Baha’i faith was detained on religious grounds, according to members of the community.¹ And in the Philippines, three United Methodist Church missionaries were forced to leave the country or faced issues with visa renewals after they were involved in investigating human rights violations on a fact-finding mission.²

But the region also saw several instances of widespread use of government force against religious groups. In Burma (Myanmar), large-scale displacement of religious minorities continued. During the course of the year, more than 14,500 Rohingya Muslims were reported by Human Rights Watch to have fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape abuses, and at least 4,500 Rohingya were stuck in a border area known as “no-man’s land,” where they were harassed by Burmese officials trying to get them to cross to Bangladesh.³ In addition, fighting between the Burmese military and armed ethnic organizations in the states of Kachin and Shan led to the displacement of other religious minorities, mostly Christians.⁴

Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan, it is estimated that at least 1,500 Muslim religious prisoners remained in prison on charges of religious extremism or membership in banned groups.⁵

Some countries in the Asia-Pacific region saw all-time highs in their overall government restrictions scores. This includes China, which continued to have the highest score on the Government Restrictions Index (GRI) out of all 198 countries and territories in the study. China has been near the top of the list of most restrictive governments in each year since the inception of the study, and in 2018 it reached a new peak in its score (9.3 out of 10).

The Chinese government restricts religion in a variety of ways, including banning entire religious groups (such as the Falun Gong movement and several Christian groups), prohibiting certain religious practices, raiding places of worship and detaining and torturing individuals.⁶ In 2018, the government continued a detention campaign against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and other Muslims in Xinjiang province, holding at least 800,000 (and possibly up to 2 million) in detention facilities “designed to erase religious and ethnic identities,” according to the U.S. State Department.⁷

Tajikistan also stands out with a GRI score of 7.9, an all-time high for that country. In 2018, the Tajik government amended its religion law, increasing control over religious education domestically and over those who travel abroad for religious education. The amendment also requires religious groups to report their activities to authorities and requires state approval for appointing imams. Throughout the year, the Tajik government continued to deny minority religious groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, official recognition. In January, Jehovah’s Witnesses reported that more than a dozen members were interrogated by police and pressured to renounce their faith.⁸

While these are examples of countries with “very high” government restrictions on religion in Asia and the Pacific, there also are several notable countries in the “high” category that experienced an increase in their scores. India, for example, reached a new peak in its GRI score in 2018, scoring 5.9 out of 10 on the index, while Thailand also experienced an all-time high (5.4).

In India, anti-conversion laws affected minority religious groups. For example, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in September, police charged 271 Christians with attempting to convert people by drugging them and “spreading lies about Hinduism.” Furthermore, throughout the year, politicians made comments targeting religious minorities. In December, the Shiv Sena Party, which holds seats in parliament, published an editorial calling for measures such as mandatory family planning for Muslims to limit their population growth. And law enforcement officials were involved in cases against religious minorities: In Jammu and Kashmir, four police personnel, among others, were arrested in connection with the kidnapping, rape and killing of an 8-year-old girl from a nomadic Muslim family, reportedly to push her community out of the area.⁹

In Thailand, as part of broader immigration raids in 2018, the government arrested hundreds of immigrants who allegedly did not have legal status, including religious minorities from other countries who were seeking asylum or refugee status. Among the detainees were Christians and Ahmadi Muslims from Pakistan as well as Christian Montagnards from Vietnam. During the year, Thai authorities also detained six leading Buddhist monks, a move that the government said was an effort to curb corruption but that some observers called a politically motivated attempt to assert control over temples.¹⁰

Government restrictions on religion in other regions

While Asia and the Pacific had the largest increases in their Government Restrictions Index scores, the Middle East and North Africa still had the highest median level of government restrictions, with a score of 6.2 on the GRI – up from 6.0 in 2017, more than double the global median (2.9), and at its highest point since the aftermath of the Arab Spring in 2012.

As in Asia, the rise in GRI scores in the Middle East and North Africa was partly due to more governments using force against religious groups. All but one country in the region had reports of government use of force related to religion in 2018, although many were at the lowest level (between one and nine incidents). In Jordan, for example, a media personality and an editor employed at his website were detained and charged with “sectarian incitement and causing religious strife” for posting on Facebook a cartoon of a Turkish chef sprinkling salt at Jesus’ Last Supper.¹¹

But government force against religious groups was much more widespread in some countries in the region. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, more than 300 Shiite Muslims remained in prison in the country’s Eastern Province, where the government has arrested more than 1,000 Shiites since 2011 in connection with protests for greater rights.¹²

Aside from Asia-Pacific and the Middle East-North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa was the only other region to experience an increase in its median level of government restrictions in 2018 (from 2.6 to 2.7), reaching a new high following a steady rise in recent years. While government use of force against religious groups decreased in the region, both harassment of religious groups and physical violence against minority groups went up.

More than eight-in-ten countries in the sub-Saharan region (40 out of 48) experienced some form of government harassment of religious groups, and 14 countries (29%) had reports of governments using physical coercion against religious minorities. In Mozambique, for example, the government arbitrarily detained men, women and children who appeared to be Muslim in response to violent attacks on civilians and security forces by an insurgent group. According to media and local organizations, the government response to the attacks was “heavy-handed.”¹³

Europe experienced a small decline in its median level of government restrictions, falling from 2.9 in 2017 to 2.8 in 2018, although government use of force increased slightly (see Chapter 3 for details). The median level of government restrictions in the Americas, meanwhile, remained stable between 2017 and 2018, as the region continued to experience the lowest levels of government restrictions compared with all other regions.

Social hostilities involving religion declined slightly in 2018

This is the 11th annual report in this continuing study, which looks not only at government restrictions on religion but also at social hostilities involving religion – that is, acts of religion-related hostility by private individuals, organizations or groups in society.

The new analysis finds that globally, social hostilities declined slightly in 2018 after hitting an all-time high the prior year. The median score on the Social Hostilities Index (a 10-point scale based on 13 measures of social hostilities involving religion) fell from 2.1 in 2017 to 2.0 in 2018. This small decline was partly due to fewer reports of incidents in which some religious groups (usually of a majority faith in a particular country) attempted to prevent other religious groups (usually of minority faiths) from operating. There also were fewer reports of individuals being assaulted or displaced from their homes for religious expression that goes against the majority faith in a country (see Appendix D for full details).

The number of countries with “high” or “very high” levels of social hostilities involving religion also declined slightly from 56 (28% of all 198 countries and territories in the study) to 53 (27%). This includes 16 European countries (36% of all countries in Europe), 14 in the Asia-Pacific region (28% of all Asia-Pacific countries) and 11 in the Middle East and North Africa (55% of MENA countries).

Taken together, in 2018, 40% of the world’s countries (80 countries overall) had “high” or “very high” levels of overall restrictions on religion — reflecting either government actions or hostile acts by private individuals, organizations or social groups – down slightly from 42% (83 countries) in 2017. This remains close to the 11-year peak that was reached in 2012, when 43% (85 countries) had high or very high levels of overall restrictions. By this combined measure, as of 2018, all 20 countries in the Middle East-North Africa region have high overall restrictions on religion, as do more than half of Asia-Pacific countries (27 countries, or 54% of the region) and more than a third of countries in Europe (17 countries, 38%).

For full results, see Appendix F.

How do restrictions on religion vary by regime type?

In this report, for the first time, Pew Research Center combined its data on government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion with a classification of regime types, based on the Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit.¹⁴ Researchers did this to discern whether there is a link between different models of government and levels of restrictions on religion – in other words, whether restrictions on religion tend to be more or less common in countries with full or partial democracies than in those with authoritarian regimes.¹⁵

The analysis finds a strong association between authoritarianism and government restrictions on religion. While there are many exceptions to this pattern, authoritarian regimes are much more common among the countries with very high government restrictions on religion – roughly two-thirds of these countries (65%) are classified as authoritarian. Among countries with low government restrictions on religion, meanwhile, just 7% are authoritarian.

There is less of a clear pattern when it comes to social hostilities involving religion. There are no countries classified by the Economist Intelligence Unit as full democracies that have very high levels of social hostilities involving religion (just as there are no full democracies with very high levels of government restrictions involving religion). At the same time, there are many authoritarian countries with low levels of social hostilities involving religion, suggesting that in some cases, a government may restrict religion through laws and actions by state authorities while limiting religious hostilities among its citizens.

When looking at countries with very high government restrictions on religion, Pew Research Center found that of the 26 countries in this category whose regimes were scored by the EIU on its Democracy Index in 2018, 17 (65%) were classified as authoritarian, three were hybrid regimes (12%) and three were flawed democracies (12%). There were no countries with very high government restrictions that were full democracies.¹⁶ The three countries with very high government restrictions that were classified as flawed democracies – Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore – all are regionally clustered in Southeast Asia.

Of the 30 countries with high government restrictions on religion, there were 12 authoritarian states (40%), 11 hybrid regimes (37%) and six flawed democracies (20%), according to the EIU Democracy Index. One full democracy, Denmark, also was in this category. In 2018, Denmark fell into the high government restrictions category for the first time, with its score driven partly by a ban on face coverings, which included Islamic burqas and niqabs, that went into effect that year.¹⁷

At the other end of the spectrum, among the 74 countries with low government restrictions, just five were classified as authoritarian (7%), 13 were hybrid regimes (18%), 27 were flawed democracies (36%) and seven were full democracies (9%). The countries with low government restrictions on religion that were also classified as authoritarian by the Democracy Index are all in sub-Saharan Africa: Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Republic of the Congo, Swaziland and Togo. There was no Democracy Index classification of regime type for 22 countries with low government restrictions (for a full list, see Appendix E).

In terms of social hostilities involving religion, the picture is more mixed – which makes sense given that social hostilities look at actions by private individuals or social groups and do not directly originate from government actions.

Among the 10 countries with very high levels of social hostilities, there were four authoritarian states, three hybrid regimes and three flawed democracies – India, Israel and Sri Lanka. Again, like countries with very high government restrictions, there were no full democracies with very high levels of social hostilities.

Among the 43 countries with high levels of social hostilities, nine were classified as authoritarian (21%), 14 were hybrid regimes (33%), 13 were flawed democracies (30%) and five were full democracies (12%).¹⁸

The five countries categorized as full democracies with high levels of social hostilities are all in Europe – Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – and all had reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic incidents. In Switzerland, for instance, Muslim groups reported growing anti-Muslim sentiments due to negative coverage by the media and hostile discourse on Islam by right-leaning political parties. During the year, for instance, a journalist who had initiated a local ban on face coverings handed out a “Swiss Stop Islam Award” of about $2,000 USD to three recipients.¹⁹

Among the 81 countries with low levels of social hostilities in 2018, there were 24 with no data on regime types (mostly small island nations the Democracy Index does not cover). Those with data are most commonly classified as flawed democracies (26 countries, or 32% of the 81 countries with low social hostilities).

But, strikingly, 17 countries (21%) with low social hostilities involving religion were classified as authoritarian – including countries like Eritrea and Kazakhstan, which have very high government restrictions on religion. In addition, several other authoritarian states with very high government restrictions on religion – such as China, Iran and Uzbekistan – have only moderate levels of social hostilities involving religion. In these cases, high levels of government control over religion may lead to fewer hostilities by nongovernment actors.

The rest of this report looks more closely at other changes in religious restrictions in 2018, including the countries with the most extensive government restrictions or social hostilities and the extent of changes in restrictions on religion since 2017 (Chapter 1); details about the harassment of specific religious groups (Chapter 2); and additional analysis on restrictions on religion by region (Chapter 3) and among the most populous countries in the world (Chapter 4).

Full results for all countries are available in Appendix F.

Countries with the most extensive government restrictions on religion

Government restrictions involving religion can vary greatly depending on the country. Some countries have much higher levels of government restrictions than others, either because their governments carry out a wider variety of actions that inhibit religious freedom, or because they enforce such restrictions more severely, or both.

In 2018, 26 of the 198 countries in this study had “very high” levels of government restrictions, a slight decrease from 27 in 2017 – which was the largest number of countries to reach the “very high” category since the study began in 2007.

On the other hand, the number of countries with “high” government restrictions rose by five in 2018, from 25 to 30. (For details about the thresholds for the “very high” and “high” categories, see Methodology.)

Three countries or territories – Iraq, Western Sahara and Yemen – had increased levels of government restrictions in 2018 that pushed them into the “very high” category (though all three had been in the top category in some previous years). Yemen, for example, returned to the “very high” category for the first time since 2011 after its score on the Government Restrictions Index (GRI) increased from 4.7 in 2017 to 6.6 in 2018, due in part to Houthi authorities instituting fees for people making the hajj (Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca) and shutting down travel agencies that would not comply.²⁰

Houthi forces also intensified pressure on members of the Baha’i faith. During the year, Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi called on his followers to defend Yemen against Baha’is, who he said were “satanic” and at war with Islam. Houthi forces also continued to detain Baha’is and charged more than 20 of them with apostasy and espionage.²¹

Iraq and Western Sahara returned to the “very high” category in 2018 after dropping into the “high” category due to small decreases (less than 1 point on the GRI) in 2017. In 2018, both countries experienced very small increases that moved them back into the highest category.²²

Four countries – Comoros, Laos, Pakistan and Sudan – fell out of the “very high” category, although all maintained “high” levels of government restrictions. Laos, Pakistan and Sudan had small decreases of less than 1 point in 2018. Comoros, however, experienced a more substantial decrease, from 7.4 to 5.8 on the GRI, due to fewer reported incidents of government officials harassing minority Muslim groups. In 2017, the government had closed mosques of certain Muslim communities.²³

For a complete list of all countries in each category, see the Government Restrictions Index table in Appendix A.

Countries with the most extensive social hostilities involving religion

As with government restrictions, some countries stand out each year for having very high levels of social hostilities involving religion. Social hostilities include violence carried out by individuals as well as efforts by groups outside of government to target people based on their religion, such as harassment of a religious minority by members of the majority faith.

In 2018, 10 of the 198 countries in this study had “very high” levels of social hostilities involving religion – the same number as in 2017, though two countries in this category changed.

Libya and Sri Lanka had increases in their Social Hostilities Index (SHI) scores that put them into the “very high” category in 2018. Libya experienced a small increase of less than 1 point, while Sri Lanka’s SHI score rose from 5.6 to 7.2. Sri Lanka’s increase was due in part to a series of violent riots that took place after a Sinhalese Buddhist man was killed by Muslims. The killing sparked retaliation against the Muslim community that left 30 Muslims injured or dead and led the government to declare a 10-day state of emergency.²⁴(This report focuses on data from 2018, before the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka that killed hundreds in 2019.)

Meanwhile, Bangladesh and Yemen fell out of the top category for social hostilities in 2018, with small decreases that moved them into the “high” category. In Bangladesh, for example, there were fewer reported incidents of communal violence between religious groups in 2018 than in 2017.

For a complete list of all countries in each category, see the Social Hostilities Index table in Appendix B.

Changes in government restrictions on religion

Many countries do not reach the “very high” or “high” categories of government restrictions but still experience notable changes in how their governments restrict religion. To capture these situations, Pew Research Center analyzes the magnitude of changes across all countries and categories to provide insight into government actions and policies that have an especially large impact on religious restrictions in each country in a given year.

In 2018, 67 countries had increases in their GRI scores, while 51 countries had decreases and 80 countries had no change in their scores on the Government Restrictions Index. By contrast, in 2017, an equal number of countries had increases and decreases in their GRI scores (67 each), while slightly fewer (64) had no change in their scores that year.

Yemen experienced the greatest change in its GRI score, rising by 1.9 points (see details above). No countries saw large changes of 2.0 or more points in their GRI scores in 2018. Eleven countries saw modest changes (1.0 to 1.9 points) in their GRI scores, with nine of them experiencing increases. In Armenia, for example, police detained a self-described atheist youth in an attempt to pressure him to rejoin the Armenian Apostolic Church, according to an independent media report.²⁵

Most countries (107 out of 198) experienced only small changes (less than 1 point) in their GRI scores, including 58 with increases and 49 with decreases.

Changes in social hostilities involving religion

In 2018, 61 countries experienced increases in their SHI scores, while 71 countries had decreases.

Five countries saw large changes (2 points or more) in social hostilities in 2018, with two – El Salvador and South Korea – rising from the “low” category to the “moderate” category. In South Korea, more than 120,000 people protested coercive religious conversion after reports that a couple had killed their daughter during an effort to forcibly convert her to Christianity.²⁶

The other three countries – Italy, Uganda and the United Kingdom – experienced large decreases in their SHI scores. The decline in social hostilities in Italy may be due in part to the government not publishing statistics on religiously motivated incidents in 2018, unlike in previous years.²⁷

Thirty-four countries registered modest changes in SHI scores (1.0 to 1.9 points), including 13 increases and 21 decreases. One of the increases occurred in Malaysia, where there were additional reports of violence against religious groups, including an incident of mob violence in which 200 masked individuals tried to remove worshippers from a Hindu temple.²⁸

Out of the 198 countries in the study, 93 experienced small changes in their SHI scores (0.1 to 0.9 points) – 46 with increases and 47 with decreases. There were no changes in SHI scores in 66 countries.

Changes in overall restrictions on religion

In addition to looking at measures of government restrictions separately from social hostilities, Pew Research Center analyzes these changes together to help provide a more complete picture of religious restrictions in each country.

In 2018, roughly equal numbers of countries had increases (77 countries) and decreases (80) in their overall scores – in most cases, just small changes in either direction.

Among the countries with net increases, 57 had small increases (less than 1 point) and 18 had modest increases (between 1.0 and 1.9 points). Only two countries (El Salvador and South Korea) had large increases of 2 points or more in their overall scores.

Among the countries that had decreases, most (59) had small decreases and fewer (19) had modest decreases. Two countries – Italy and the United Kingdom – had large decreases in their overall scores.

Forty-one countries had no change in their overall scores between 2017 and 2018.

In 2018, this study’s sources continued to report harassment against religious groups – either by governments or social groups and individuals – in the vast majority of countries around the world (185 out of 198).²⁹ This figure ticked down slightly from 187 the previous year, marking the first decrease since 2014 in the number of countries where harassment was observed.

Harassment can include a wide range of actions – from verbal abuse to physical violence and killings – motivated at least in part by the target’s religious identity. In addition to harassment of religious groups and persons, this study measures harassment against those who are religiously unaffiliated, including atheists, agnostics and humanists.

As in previous years, Christians and Muslims experienced harassment in more countries than any other religious groups in 2018. This pattern has remained consistent since the study began in 2007. Christians and Muslims are the two largest religious groups in the world and are more geographically dispersed than smaller groups.

In 2018, Christians reportedly were harassed in 145 countries, up from 143 countries in 2017. In Israel, for instance, an Ethiopian Christian monk was reportedly injured by police officers who were attempting to evict him from his church.³⁰ And in Burundi, a Christian man died after he was imprisoned and allegedly beaten by police for refusing – on the basis of his religious conscience – to register to vote.³¹

Muslims were harassed in 139 countries in 2018, down slightly from 140 countries in 2017. In Argentina, a Muslim woman was not permitted to use a swimming pool because she was wearing a burkini.³² And in Lebanon, three brothers reportedly killed a Sunni man after accusing him of making blasphemous remarks in a market.³³

Jews were harassed in 88 countries – a slight increase from 87 countries in 2017 – and continue to be harassed in the third highest number of countries, despite the group’s relatively small population size (0.2% of the global population). In France, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor was stabbed to death in March 2018, and President Emmanuel Macron said publicly that the victim was “murdered because she was Jewish.”³⁴

Hindus were harassed in 19 countries – declining from 23 countries the previous two years. A Hindu priest was killed in Bangladesh in an attack authorities believed may have been motivated by anti-Hindu sentiment.³⁵

Buddhists experienced the largest increase of any single religious group in the number of countries where they faced harassment, from 19 in 2017 to 24 in 2018 – the highest number since the study began in 2007. In Sri Lanka, a Buddhist group was denied permission to construct a shrine on a mountain that they claimed to have a connection to.³⁶ And in Indonesia, a Buddhist woman was convicted of blasphemy for complaining about the volume of the Islamic call to prayer.³⁷

Religiously unaffiliated people (including atheists, agnostics and people who don’t identify with any religion) were harassed for religious reasons in 18 countries in 2018, down from 23 the previous year – the biggest decrease of any group. Still, in Egypt, an atheist blogger was arrested and detained for four days after being charged with insulting Islam and Shariah and disrupting communal peace with a series of YouTube videos.³⁸

Government versus social harassment of groups

Religious groups face harassment from a variety of actors, but some tend to experience more abuse from governments than from individuals or groups in society, and vice versa. In 2018, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and religiously unaffiliated people were harassed by government actors in more countries than they were by individuals or groups not affiliated with the government, such as other religious groups, hate groups or secular groups. Conversely, Jews have faced more social harassment than government harassment in each year since the study began in 2007. This pattern continued in 2018, when social hostilities against Jews were reported in 77 countries, compared with 59 countries where Jews experienced government harassment.

Adherents of folk religions faced both social hostilities and government harassment in 23 countries in 2018. For example, a Vodou practitioner in Haiti was killed after he provided treatment to an ill woman who later died.³⁹

Other religious groups beyond those separately analyzed above – including Baha’is, Scientologists, Sikhs, Rastafarians and Zoroastrians – experienced government harassment in twice as many countries as they faced social hostilities (50 countries vs. 25). For instance, in Canada, the Quebec Appeal Court upheld the right of the legislature to deny entrance to individuals with a kirpan, a sacred dagger carried by Sikhs.⁴⁰

Harassment of Christians and Muslims by region

Beyond the different types of harassment religious groups face, there also are regional variations in where the two largest religious groups are more likely to face harassment. The Middle East-North Africa region had the largest share of countries where Christians were harassed in 2018. Of the 20 countries in the region, 19 had some form of harassment targeting Christians (either by governments or social groups). Social harassment occurred in 15 countries, the highest share (75%) since the beginning of the study, while government harassment of Christians was reported in 19 countries in the region, down from all 20 in 2017. For example, in Algeria, a court denied an interfaith couple’s marriage application because one of them was a Christian.⁴¹

Christians reportedly were harassed by governments or social groups in 80% of countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In Europe, Christians (including minority Christian sects) were harassed in about three-quarters of countries (76%), while in sub-Saharan Africa, Christians faced harassment in two-thirds of countries (67%). In the Americas, harassment of Christians dropped in 2018, from 21 countries to 20.

A higher number of countries experienced government harassment (rather than social harassment) of Christians in every region but the Americas, where Christians were harassed by governments in 16 countries and social groups in 17 countries.

When it comes to the share of countries, Muslims faced more harassment overall in the Middle East-North Africa region (20 of 20 countries) and Europe (39 of 45 countries) than other regions. In the Middle East, all 20 governments harassed Muslims (including minority sects within Islam), and 82% of European governments did the same. Meanwhile, social harassment of Muslims was reported in 65% of countries in the Middle East and 71% of countries in Europe (32 out of 45 countries).

In Asia and the Pacific, harassment of Muslims was reported in 70% of countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, this figure was 71%, and it was 31% in the Americas. In every region except the Americas, harassment of Muslims by governments was more common than by social groups, but in the Americas, 20% of governments harassed Muslims, while social hostilities against Muslims occurred in in 26% of countries.

Government restrictions by region

In 2018, the global median level of government restrictions on religion reached a peak at 2.9 after remaining stable at 2.8 in 2016 and 2017. Three out of five regions in the study experienced increases (Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa), while Europe had a slight decrease and the median score for the Americas remained about the same.

As in all prior years of the study, the Middle East and North Africa continued to have the highest median level of government restrictions (6.2 out of 10 on the Government Restrictions Index, or GRI). All 20 states in the region had some level of harassment of religious groups and interference in worship. Qatar, for example, continued to prohibit non-Muslim groups from public worship, displaying religious symbols and proselytizing.⁴² And in Sunni-majority Egypt, authorities continued to restrict access to the tomb of Imam Al-Hussein, the grandson of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and an important figure for Shiite Muslims. The closure occurred, as it has in recent years, during the Shiite commemoration of Ashura, and although the Egyptian government claimed it was due to construction, some media reported that it was an attempt to limit Shiite religious rituals.⁴³

The largest overall increase in levels of government restrictions on religion occurred in the Asia-Pacific region, where the median GRI score among the region’s 50 countries moved from 3.8 to 4.4 – an all-time high (see Overview for details). While this increase was driven partly by instances of government use of force against religious groups in more countries (especially at “low levels”), there also were increased reports of restrictions on wearing religious symbols or headscarves in the region.

In total, 19 out of 50 countries in the Asia-Pacific region (38%) had some reported restrictions on wearing religious symbols and headscarves, an increase from 14 countries (28%) the previous year. In Australia, for example, a judge did not allow a woman to wear a niqab in the court’s public spectator gallery during her husband’s trial on charges of terrorism.⁴⁴ And in Thailand, a public school located on a Buddhist temple property in the predominantly Muslim southern part of the country refused to let a group of Muslim students wear headscarves to school.⁴⁵ In Turkey, by contrast, students and parents claimed a school principal in the city of Urfa threatened that female students would receive failing grades if they did not wear head coverings.⁴⁶

In sub-Saharan Africa, the median GRI score ticked up from 2.6 to 2.7 between 2017 and 2018. As discussed in the Overview, government harassment and hostility toward minority religious groups was reported in slightly more countries across the region. Although government force against religious groups fell overall, 20 countries (42%) in sub-Saharan Africa still experienced some level of government force toward religious groups in 2018.

In Kenya, for example, counterterrorism efforts led to the disproportionate targeting of Muslims, particularly ethnic Somalis in areas along the border with Somalia. The government actions included “extrajudicial killing, torture and forced interrogation, arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, and denial of freedom of assembly and worship,” according to the U.S. State Department.⁴⁷

And in Eritrea, where the government has officially recognized only four religious groups (the Eritrean Orthodox Church, Sunni Islam, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea) since 2002, hundreds of prisoners continued to be detained on the basis of their religion. An estimated 345 church leaders and 800 to 1,000 lay members were imprisoned, according to a UK-based Christian organization, and 53 Jehovah’s Witnesses reportedly remained in detention for refusing military service as a matter of conscientious objection.⁴⁸ The government also detained up to 800 protesters, according to human rights groups, after the death in prison of a prominent Muslim who had been arrested for speaking out against a government plan to expropriate an Islamic school.⁴⁹

Europe’s median GRI score dipped slightly, from 2.9 in 2017 to 2.8 in 2018, partly because of fewer reports that governments failed to protect religious groups from abuse. For example, in 2017, Jewish groups had criticized a French prosecutor’s delay in indicting a man for beating a 65-year-old Jewish woman and pushing her out a window, as well as the prosecutor’s initial exclusion of anti-Semitism as a motive for the murder.⁵⁰ But no such complaints were reported in 2018, even though there were continued reports of harassment of Jews because of their religion. In fact, the French government announced a three-year national action plan (spanning 2018 to 2020) to combat anti-Semitism and racism, including countering online hate content and improving victim protection services. At the same time, however, the government continued to restrict religion through its counterterrorism measures, closing down mosques and expelling preachers it deemed radical.⁵¹

Throughout Europe, government use of force – which includes confiscation or damage of property, detentions, displacement, physical abuse or killings – against religious groups increased slightly, especially at low levels: The number of countries where fewer than 10 such incidents were recorded during the year increased from 10 in 2017 to 15 in 2018, while the number of countries where no such incidents were reported dropped from 31 to 28.

For instance, in North Macedonia (formerly the Republic of Macedonia), authorities seized the passport of the archbishop of the Orthodox Archbishopric of Ohrid – a religious group the government has denied official recognition – and prevented him from crossing the border into Greece. The archbishop filed complaints with various European entities, and by the end of the year, the passport had been returned without explanation.⁵²

There was more widespread use of force in some parts of the region. In Russia, for example, the government continued targeting “nontraditional” religious groups, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were formally banned in 2017. Throughout 2018, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia faced raids on their homes, detentions, travel restrictions and investigations, and an estimated $90 million of church property was confiscated.⁵³

The Americas continued to have lower levels of government restrictions on religion than any other major region; its median score was stable (2.0 in both 2017 and 2018). Still, 86% of countries in the Americas (30 out of 35) experienced some level of government harassment against religious groups, and 80% (28 countries) had reports of authorities interfering in worship in some way.

In Nicaragua, according to Amnesty International, the government “committed or permitted” serious human rights violations, including attacks on the Catholic Church and its clergy, especially those who helped protect protesters. For example, in July, police conducted a 15-hour attack on a church in the capital city of Managua that was providing shelter to student protesters; two people died and at least 10 were injured in the police action. And in September, a deputy chief of police assaulted a priest for asking government supporters to turn down ruling-party propaganda music playing outside the church during a funeral.⁵⁴

In the Bahamas and Jamaica, meanwhile, the Afro-Caribbean religious practice of Obeah remains illegal.⁵⁵ At the same time, Antigua and Barbuda decriminalized marijuana use – which Rastafarians argue is integral to their religious rituals – and publicly apologized for discriminating against the group in the past (although Rastafarians continued to face obstacles to using marijuana ceremonially in other parts of the region).⁵⁶

Social hostilities by region

In 2018, the global median level of social hostilities declined slightly from 2.1 to 2.0, though it remained close to the all-time high reached in the previous year. The Americas was the only region in 2018 to experience an increase in its median score on the 10-point Social Hostilities Index (SHI). The Asia-Pacific region’s median score remained about the same, while sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the Middle East-North Africa regions all experienced declines – with the Middle East and North Africa’s score near its all-time low of 3.7, established in the baseline year of 2007.⁵⁷

The median SHI score in the Americas was 0.7, an increase from 0.4 in 2017. Still, the Americas continued to have the lowest overall level of social hostilities of the five geographic regions analyzed in the study.

The largest increase within the Americas occurred in El Salvador, where in March, during Catholic Holy Week, armed men robbed a priest and his companions on their way to Mass and killed the priest.⁵⁸ Then, in July, Salvadoran gang members killed a Protestant pastor for reportedly persuading six members to leave the gang and join his congregation. Gang members also extorted money from congregations in exchange for letting them operate, or in some cases made them divert charitable donations to gang members’ families.⁵⁹

The United States experienced a decrease in its overall social hostilities score, but it was one of the only countries in the Americas with religion-related terrorist activity in 2018.⁶⁰ In October, a man attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh and shot worshippers during services, killing 11 people and injuring six others in one of the deadliest assaults on Jews in American history. Prior to the attack, the shooter was reported to have posted anti-Semitic statements on social media protesting a nonprofit Jewish organization’s resettlement of refugees in the U.S.⁶¹

In sub-Saharan Africa, the median level of social hostilities involving religion fell from 2.2 to 2.0 between 2017 and 2018, while Europe’s median score on the SHI dropped from 2.6 to 2.2, and the Middle East-North Africa saw a decline from 4.3 to 3.8. There were fewer countries in all these regions with reported attacks on individuals who practice a religion that goes against the majority faith in the country (see SHI.Q.10 in Appendix D). Sub-Saharan Africa also had fewer countries with reports of hostilities over enforcing religious norms (SHI.Q.9).

The median social hostilities score for Asia and the Pacific remained at 2.1 in 2018, the same as in 2017.

More than three-quarters of the world’s population lives in the 25 most populous countries. Focusing on these countries can shed light on how most people are affected by government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion – although not everyone in any particular country is equally affected by religious restrictions. Religious minorities vary from country to country and are often impacted disproportionately.

Among the 25 most populous countries in 2018, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and Russia had the highest overall levels of both government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion. The most populous countries with the lowest overall scores were Japan, South Africa, Italy, Brazil and the United States.⁶²

The highest levels of government restrictions among the most populous countries occurred in China, Iran, Russia, Indonesia and Egypt, all of which rank in the “very high” category of restrictions. The countries ranking lowest in terms of government restrictions were Japan, Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines, and South Korea. All of these countries had “low” levels of government restrictions in 2018, except for South Korea, which had “moderate” levels of government restrictions.

The most populous countries with the highest levels of social hostilities involving religion were India, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the same five countries as in 2017. Bangladesh is the only one of these countries that moved out of the “very high” category into the “high” category in 2018. Japan, China, Vietnam, Iran and the United States had the lowest levels of social hostilities among the world’s 25 most populous countries. Japan was the only one of the top 25 to fall into the “low” category of social hostilities in 2018; the rest experienced “moderate” or higher levels of social hostilities involving religion.

There are cases when levels of government restrictions tend to mirror levels of social hostilities in a country. For example, Egypt was in the “very high” categories of both government restrictions and social hostilities in 2018, while Italy scored “moderate” on both measures. But there also are cases when government restrictions and social hostilities do not align. For example, Iran had the second-highest score on the Government Restrictions Index out of the 198 countries and territories in the study in 2018, yet it had “moderate” levels of social hostilities involving religion.

In 2018, all 25 of the world’s most populous countries experienced either small changes (less than 1.0 point or no change in their Government Restrictions Index (GRI) scores. As a result, most of these countries did not shift from one category to another. Pakistan, however, experienced a very small decrease in government restrictions in 2018, moving it from “very high” to “high” on the GRI scale. (Among other things, in 2018 Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who had been sentenced to death in 2010 on blasphemy charges.⁶³)

In terms of changes to Social Hostilities Index (SHI) scores, three of the most populous countries had large changes (2.0 points or more) in 2018. Italy and the United Kingdom experienced large decreases in social hostilities involving religion, with Italy falling from the “high” category to “moderate,” perhaps in part because the Italian government did not report on incidents related to religious hatred as it had in previous years.⁶⁴ In 2017, the United Kingdom had experienced multiple incidents of terrorism related to religion, including a bombing at Manchester Arena that killed 23 people and injured more than 100, as well as an incident in which an individual drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians gathered outside a mosque in London, injuring eight and killing one.⁶⁵ No such incidents were reported in the UK in 2018.

Among the 25 most populous countries, South Korea was the only one that experienced a large increase in social hostilities in 2018, causing it to move from “low” to “moderate,” due in part to rising reports of hostilities over religious conversions.

This report was produced by Pew Research Center as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. Funding for the Global Religious Futures project comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation.

This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals: 

Primary Researcher

Samirah Majumdar, Research Associate                                            

Research Team

Virginia Villa, Research Assistant Alan Cooperman, Director of Religion Research Anne Fengyan Shi, Senior Researcher

Coders

Aidan Connaughton, Celia Commers, Justin Nortey, Katherine Bradshaw and Nicholas O. Kent

Editorial and Graphic Design

Michael Lipka, Editorial Manager Aleksandra Sandstrom, Senior Copy Editor Bill Webster, Senior Information Graphics Designer

Communications and Web Publishing         

Stacy Rosenberg, Associate Director, Digital Travis Mitchell, Digital Producer Anna Schiller, Senior Communications Manager Kelsey Beveridge, Communications Associate

Aidan Connaughton, research assistant, and Russell Maltempo, senior associate for technology solutions at The Pew Charitable Trusts, provided valuable assistance with the appendixes for this report.

 

 

This is the 11th time Pew Research Center has measured restrictions on religion around the globe.⁶⁶ This report, which includes data for the year ending Dec. 31, 2018, generally follows the same methodology as previous reports.

Pew Research Center uses two 10-point indexes – the Government Restrictions Index (GRI) and the Social Hostilities Index (SHI) – to rate 198 countries and self-governing territories on their levels of restrictions.⁶⁷ This report analyzes changes in restrictions on an annual basis, focusing on the 2018 calendar year.

The study categorizes the direction and degree of change in each country’s scores in two ways: numerically and by percentile. First, countries are grouped into categories depending on the size of the numeric change in their scores from year to year on the two indexes: changes of 2 points or more in either direction, changes of at least 1 point but less than 2 points, changes of less than 1 point, or no change at all. (See chart at right.)

Changes in overall levels of restrictions are calculated for each country by comparing its scores on both indexes (the GRI and the SHI) from year to year. When a country’s scores on the GRI and the SHI changed in the same direction (both increased or both decreased), the greater amount of change determines the category. For instance, if the country’s GRI score increased by 0.8 and its SHI score increased by 1.5, the country was put into the overall “1.0-1.9 increase” category. When a country’s score increased on one index but decreased on the other, the difference between the amounts of change determines the grouping. For example, if the country’s GRI score increased by 2.0 and its SHI score decreased by 1.5, the country went into the overall “0.1-0.9 increase” category. When a country’s score on one index stayed the same, the amount of change on the other index was used to assign the category.

Second, this report categorizes the levels of government restrictions and social hostilities in each country by percentiles. As the benchmark, it uses the results from the baseline year of the study (the year ending in mid-2007). Scores in the top 5% on each index in mid-2007 were categorized as “very high.” The next highest 15% of scores were categorized as “high,” and the following 20% were categorized as “moderate.” The bottom 60% of scores were categorized as “low.” See the table to the right for the index score thresholds as determined from the mid-2007 data. These thresholds are applied to all subsequent years of data.

Overview of procedures

The methodology used by Pew Research Center to assess and compare restrictions on religion was developed by former Pew Research Center senior researcher and director of cross-national data Brian J. Grim in consultation with other Pew Research Center staff members, building on a methodology that Grim and Professor Roger Finke developed while at Penn State University’s Association of Religion Data Archives.⁶⁸ The goal was to devise quantifiable, objective and transparent measures of the extent to which governments and societal groups impinge on the practice of religion. The findings were used to rate countries and self-governing territories on two indexes that are reproducible and can be periodically updated.

This research goes beyond previous efforts to assess restrictions on religion in several ways. First, Pew Research Center coded (categorized and counted) data from more than a dozen published cross-national sources, providing a high degree of confidence in the findings. Pew Research Center coders looked to the sources for only specific, well-documented facts, not opinions or commentary.

Second, Pew Research Center staff used extensive data-verification checks that reflect generally accepted best practices for such studies, such as double-blind coding (coders do not see each other’s ratings), inter-rater reliability assessments (checking for consistency among coders) and carefully monitored protocols to reconcile discrepancies among coders.

Third, the coding took into account whether the perpetrators of religion-related violence were government or private actors. The coding also identified how widespread and intensive the restrictions were in each country.

Fourth, one of the most valuable contributions of the indexes and the questions used to construct them (see the section on the coding instrument) is their ability to chart change over time.

Countries and territories

The 198 countries and self-administering territories covered by the study contain more than 99.5% of the world’s population. They include 192 of the 193 member states of the United Nations as of 2018, plus six self-administering territories – Kosovo, Hong Kong, Macau, the Palestinian territories, Taiwan and Western Sahara.⁶⁹ Reporting on these territories does not imply any position on what their international political status should be, only recognition that the de facto situations in these territories require separate analysis.

Although the 198 countries and territories vary widely in size, population, wealth, ethnic diversity, religious makeup and form of government, the study does not attempt to adjust for such differences. Poor countries are not scored differently on the indexes than wealthy ones. Countries with diverse ethnic and religious populations are not “expected” to have more social hostilities than countries with more homogeneous populations. And democracies are not assessed more leniently or harshly than authoritarian regimes.

Information sources

In the latest year of the study, Pew Research Center identified 19 widely available, frequently cited sources of information on government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion around the world. This study includes four sources that were not used in the baseline report on religious restrictions. (See below for more details on the new information sources.)

The primary sources, which are listed below, include reports from U.S. government agencies, several independent, nongovernmental organizations and a variety of European and United Nations bodies. Although most of these organizations are based in Western countries, many of them depend on local staff to collect information across the globe. As previously noted, Pew Research Center did not use the commentaries, opinions or normative judgments of the sources; the sources were combed only for factual information on specific policies and actions.

Primary sources for 2018

1. Country constitutions
2. U.S. State Department annual reports on International Religious Freedom
3. U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom annual reports
4. U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief reports
5. Human Rights First reports in first and second years of coding; Freedom House reports in subsequent years of coding
6. Human Rights Watch topical reports
7. International Crisis Group country reports
8. United Kingdom Foreign & Commonwealth Office annual report on human rights
9. Council of the European Union annual report on human rights
10. START Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland
11. European Network Against Racism Shadow Reports
12. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports
13. U.S. State Department annual Country Reports on Terrorism
14. Anti-Defamation League reports
15. U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
16. Uppsala University’s Uppsala Conflict Data Program, Armed Conflict Database
17. Human Rights Without Frontiers “Freedom of Religion or Belief” newsletters
18. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Population Statistics Database
19. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre Global Internal Displacement Database

U.S. government reports with information on the situation in the United States

• U.S. Department of Justice “Religious Freedom in Focus” newsletters and reports
• FBI Hate Crime Reports

As noted, this study includes four sources that were not included in Pew Research Center’s first report on global restrictions on religion: Freedom House reports, Uppsala University’s Armed Conflict Database, the “Freedom of Religion or Belief” newsletters of Human Rights Without Frontiers, and the Global Terrorism Database.

The Freedom House reports have replaced Human Rights First reports, which have not been updated since mid-2008. The Uppsala Armed Conflict Database provides information on the number of people affected by religion-related armed conflicts, supplementing other sources. The Human Rights Without Frontiers “Freedom of Religion or Belief” newsletters have replaced the Hudson Institute publication “Religious Freedom in the World” (by Paul Marshall), which has not been updated since its release in 2008. Human Rights Without Frontiers is a nongovernmental organization based in Brussels that has affiliated offices throughout the world.

Since 2013, Pew Research Center has used data from the Global Terrorism Database, maintained by the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), along with the International Crisis Group’s country reports, Uppsala University’s Armed Conflict Database and the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism, for information on religion-related terrorism. (One source used in earlier reports, the U.S. government’s Worldwide Incident Tracking System, or WITS, is no longer available online.) Prior to 2013, the report relied only on the International Crisis Group reports, the Uppsala database and the State Department reports for information on religion-related terrorism. The Global Terrorism Database is one of the most comprehensive sources on terrorism around the world and is the source for the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism. The addition of this source thus provides greater context and information on terrorism without biasing the reporting through the addition of information that was not previously available.

While some of the increases in religious restrictions noted in this study could reflect the use of more up-to-date and/or better information sources, Pew Research Center staff monitor the impact of source information variability each year and have found no evidence of overall informational bias. (For additional discussion, see the “Potential Biases” section in the 2014 report, “Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High.”)

In previous years, Pew Research Center has included Amnesty International’s country profiles as one of the sources used for this study. These profiles were not updated for the year 2018, so they are absent as a source for the 2018 report.

The coding instrument

As explained in more detail below, Pew Research Center staff developed a battery of questions similar to a survey questionnaire. Coders consulted the primary sources in order to answer the questions separately for each country. While the U.S. State Department’s annual reports on International Religious Freedom generally contained the most comprehensive information, the other sources provided additional factual detail that was used to settle ambiguities, resolve contradictions and help in the proper scoring of each question.

The questionnaire, or coding instrument, generated a set of numerical measures on restrictions in each country. It also made it possible to see how government restrictions intersect with broader social tensions and incidents of violence or intimidation by private actors. The coding instrument with the list of questions used for this report is shown in the summary of results in Appendix D.

The coding process required the coders to check all the sources for each country. Coders determined whether each source provided information critical to assigning a score; had supporting information but did not result in new facts; or had no available information on that particular country. Multiple sources of information were available for all countries and self-administering territories with populations greater than 1 million. Most of the countries and territories analyzed by Pew Research Center were multi-sourced; only small (predominantly island) countries had a single source, namely the State Department reports.

Coding the United States presented a special problem since it is not included in the State Department’s annual reports on International Religious Freedom. Accordingly, Pew Research Center coders also looked at reports from the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI on violations of religious freedom in the United States, in addition to consulting all the primary sources, including reports by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the International Crisis Group and the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, many of which contain data on the United States.

The coding process

Pew Research Center employed strict training and rigorous coding protocols to make its coding as objective and reproducible as possible. Coders worked directly under an experienced researcher’s supervision, with additional direction and support provided by other Pew Research Center researchers. The coders underwent an intensive training period that included a thorough overview of the research objectives, information sources and methodology.

Countries were double-blind coded by two coders (coders did not see each other’s ratings), and the initial ratings were entered into an electronic document (coding instrument) including details on each incident. The coders began by filling out the coding instrument for each country using the information source that had the most comprehensive information. The protocol for each coder was to answer every question on which information was available in the initial source. Once a coder had completed that process, they then turned to the other sources. As new information was found, this was also coded and the source duly noted. Whenever ambiguities or contradictions arose, the source providing the most detailed, clearly documented evidence was used.

After two coders had separately completed the coding instrument for a particular country, their scores were compared by a research analyst. Areas of discrepancy were discussed at length with the coders and were reconciled in order to arrive at a single score on each question for each country. The data for each country were then combined into a master file, and the answers and substantiating evidence were entered into a database.

After data collection for all countries was completed, Pew Research Center coders and researchers compared the scores from calendar year 2018 with those from the previous year, ending Dec. 31, 2017. They identified scores that had changed and analyzed the substantiating evidence for each year to make sure the change was substantive and not the result of coder error. Throughout this process, the coding instrument itself was continually monitored for possible defects. The questions were designed to be precise, comprehensive and objective so that, based on the same data and definitions, the coding could be reliably reproduced by others with the same results. At the same time, Pew Research Center has attempted to minimize changes to the coding instrument as much as is possible to ensure all changes between years are the result of actual changes in restrictions and hostilities, not changes in methodology.

Pew Research Center staff generally found few cases in which one source contradicted another. When contradictions did arise – such as when sources provided differing estimates of the number of people displaced due to religion-related violence – the source that cited the most specific documentation was used. The coders were instructed to disregard broad, unsubstantiated generalizations regarding abuses and to focus on reports that contained clear, precise documentation and factual details, such as names, dates and places where incidents occurred.

Pew Research Center staff compared coders’ scores for all questions for each of the 198 countries and territories included in the study, computing the degree to which the scores matched. The inter-rater reliability score across all variables was 0.71. Scores at or above 0.7 are generally considered good.

The data-verification procedures went beyond the inter-rater reliability statistics. They also involved comparing the answers on the main measures for each country with other closely related questions in the dataset. This provided a practical way to test the internal reliability of the data.

In previous years, Pew Research Center staff also checked the reliability of the coded data by comparing it with similar, though more limited, religious restrictions datasets. In particular, published government and social regulation of religion index scores are available from the Association of Religion Data Archives (for three years of data) and the Hudson Institute (for one year of data), which makes them ideal measures for cross-validation. The review process found very few significant discrepancies in the coded data; changes were made only if warranted by a further review of the primary sources.

Restriction of religion indexes

The Government Restrictions Index is based on 20 indicators of ways that national and local governments restrict religion, including through coercion and force. The Social Hostilities Index is based on 13 indicators of ways in which private individuals and social groups infringe on religious beliefs and practices, including religiously biased crimes, mob violence and efforts to stop particular religious groups from growing or operating. The study also counted the number and types of documented incidents of religion-related violence, including terrorism and armed conflict.

Government Restrictions Index

Coding multiple indicators makes it possible to construct a Government Restrictions Index of sufficient gradation to allow for meaningful cross-national comparisons. An additional advantage of using multiple indicators is that it helps mitigate the effects of measurement error in any one variable, providing greater confidence in the overall measure.

Pew Research Center coded 20 indicators of government restrictions on religion (see Appendix D for the summary of results). These 20 items were added together to create the GRI. In two cases, these items represent an aggregation of several closely related questions: Measures of five types of physical abuses are combined into a single variable (GRI Q.19), and seven questions measuring aspects of government favoritism are combined into an overall favoritism scale (GRI Q.20 is a summary variable showing whether a country received the maximum score on one or more of the seven questions).

The GRI is a fine-grained measure created by adding the 20 items on a 0-to-10 metric, with 0 indicating very low levels of government restrictions on religion and 10 indicating very high levels of restrictions. The 20 questions that form the GRI are coded in a standard scale from 0 to 1 point, while gradations among the answers allowed for partial points to be given for lesser degrees of the particular government restriction being measured. The overall value of the index was calculated and proportionally adjusted – so that it had a maximum value of 10 and a possible range of 0 to 10 – by dividing the sum of the variables by two.

A test of whether the 20 items were statistically reliable as a single index produced a scale reliability coefficient of 0.91 for calendar year 2018. Since coefficients of 0.7 or higher are generally considered acceptable, it was statistically appropriate to combine these 20 items into a single index.

Social Hostilities Index

In addition to government restrictions, violence and intimidation in societies also can limit religious beliefs and practices. Accordingly, Pew Research Center staff tracked more than a dozen indicators of social impediments on religion. Once again, coding multiple indicators made it possible to construct an index that shows gradations of severity or intensity and allows for comparisons among countries. The summary of results contains the 13 items used by Pew Research Center staff to create the Social Hostilities Index.

The SHI was constructed by adding together the 13 indicators based on a 0-to-10 metric, with 0 indicating very low impediments to religious beliefs and practices and 10 indicating very high impediments. The various questions that form the index are coded in a standard scale from 0 to 1 point, while gradations among the answers allow for partial points to be given for lesser degrees of the particular hostilities being measured. The indicators were added together and set to have a possible range of 0 to 10 by dividing the sum of the variables by 1.3.

As with the Government Restrictions Index, various types of violence and intimidation were combined. A test of whether these 13 items were statistically reliable as a single index produced a scale reliability coefficient of 0.88. Since coefficients of 0.7 or higher are generally considered acceptable, it was statistically appropriate to combine these items into a single index.

How examples are coded

Examples of each type of government restriction or social hostility are generally counted in a single measure on the GRI or SHI. For instance, a restriction on proselytizing (sharing one’s faith with the intent of persuading another to join the faith) is not also counted as a restriction on conversion (an individual changing their religion). In some situations, however, an individual restriction or hostility may be part of a broader set of restrictions or hostilities. For instance, a mob attack by members of one religious group on an individual of another religion may be an isolated event and counted just under question SHI Q.2: Was there mob violence related to religion? However, if such an attack triggers repeated attacks between religious groups, it also might be an indication of sectarian or communal violence, which by definition involves two or more religious groups facing off in repeated clashes. In such a case, the mob attack also would be counted under question SHI Q.3: Were there acts of sectarian or communal violence between religious groups? (See the summary of results.)

Social harassment and intimidation coding

Beginning with data for 2017, researchers updated the way social harassment and intimidation of religion is calculated. There are six components that encompass question SHI Q.1.a: Were there crimes, malicious acts or violence motivated by religious hatred or bias? The six components include harassment/intimidation, property damage, detentions/abductions, displacement from homes, physical assaults and deaths (see Appendix D). For the “harassment/intimidation” measure, researchers made an update to count “limited” harassment as 0.5 points and “widespread” harassment as 1.0 point for data covering 2017 and after. “Limited” means infrequent or isolated and indicates that the harassment seems unlikely to continue. “Widespread” does not necessarily mean the whole country, but harassment could be present in certain regions with the potential to spread to others and affect several groups. “Widespread” harassment/intimidation also may indicate a substantial uptick in the number of cases of abuse, or a campaign against a certain religious group (or groups).

The other five components of SHI.Q.1.a are coded as yes (1.o point) or no (0.0 points) based on whether incidents in each subcategory occurred. Compared to the previous method, this update to coding “limited” and “widespread” intimidation and harassment resulted in a change of no more than 0.1 points to the SHI score of 53 countries in 2017; all other scores were unaffected.

Effects of consolidating to a new database

For the first few years of this study, information on the number, types and locations of incidents of government force and social violence toward religious groups as well as deference to religious authorities in matters of law were coded at the province level. (See example of data coding in the December 2009 baseline report.) Each year, the province numbers were summed and put into separate country-level files. Following the publication of the August 2011 report, Pew Research Center staff created a database that integrated all province- and country-level data on religious restrictions. During this process, Pew Research Center staff reviewed any discrepancies between province files and the sums that had been transferred to the country files and made appropriate corrections. The adjustments made were relatively minor and had small effects on index scores for countries, on average less than 0.005 points on the 10-point indexes. Consolidating the data into a database also entailed a review of the data on harassment of religious groups. In particular, instances of harassment from the year ending in mid-2007 were stored as open-ended questions, and in a few cases they were recoded to match the categories used in subsequent years.

Beginning with data covering 2012, Pew Research Center stopped collecting data at the province level; all data are coded at the country level.

Changing time period of analysis

This is the eighth time Pew Research Center has analyzed restrictions on religion in a calendar year. Previous reports analyzed 12-month periods from July 1-June 30 (e.g., July 1, 2009-June 30, 2010). The shift to calendar years was made, in part, because most of the primary sources used in this study are based on calendar years.

Because of the shift in time frame, previous studies did not report directly on incidents that occurred during the period from July 1-Dec. 31, 2010. While this misses some incidents that occurred during the second half of 2010, events that had an ongoing impact – such as a change to a country’s constitution or the outbreak of a religion-related war – were captured by the coding. Researchers for the study carefully reviewed the situation in each country and territory during this six-month period and made sure that restrictions with an ongoing impact were not overlooked.

Religion-related terrorism and armed conflict

Terrorism and war can have huge direct and indirect effects on religious groups, including destroying religious sites, displacing whole communities and inflaming sectarian passions. Accordingly, Pew Research Center tallied the number, location and consequences of instances of religion-related terrorism and armed conflict around the world, as reported in the same primary sources used to document other forms of intimidation and violence. However, war and terrorism are sufficiently complex that it is not always possible to determine the degree to which they are religiously motivated or state sponsored. Out of an abundance of caution, this study does not include them in the Government Restrictions Index. They are factored instead into the index of social hostilities involving religion, which includes one question specifically about religion-related terrorism and one question specifically about religion-related war or armed conflict. In addition, other measures in both indexes are likely to pick up spillover effects of war and terrorism on the level of religious tensions in society. For example, hate crimes, mob violence and sectarian fighting that occur in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or in the context of a religion-related war would be counted in the Social Hostilities Index, and laws or policies that clearly discriminate against a particular religious group would be registered on the Government Restrictions Index.

For the purposes of this study, the term “religion-related terrorism” is defined as premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatants by subnational groups or clandestine agents that have some identifiable religious ideology or religious motivation. It also includes acts carried out by groups that have a nonreligious identity but affect religious personnel, such as clergy. Readers should note that it is the political character and motivation of the groups, not the type of violence, that is at issue here. For instance, a bombing would not be classified as religion-related terrorism if there was no clearly discernible religious ideology or bias behind it unless it was directed at religious personnel. Religion-related war or armed conflict is defined as armed conflict (a conflict that involves sustained casualties over time or more than 1,000 battle deaths) in which religious rhetoric is commonly used to justify the use of force, or in which one or more of the combatants primarily identifies itself or the opposing side by religion.

Changes to Somalia’s coding

Starting with data covering 2013, researchers changed the way they coded government restrictions in Somalia. In previous years of the study, researchers had coded actions by the al-Shabaab rebel group as government restrictions, largely because the group effectively controlled large swathes of Somali territory. The extent of al-Shabaab control over Somali territory decreased in calendar year 2013, so researchers did not code their actions as government restrictions but rather as social hostilities. Researchers continued to follow this policy when coding data for 2018.

Crimea coding

Starting with data covering 2015, researchers coded incidents occurring in Crimea as part of Russia’s GRI and SHI score. This is to reflect Russia’s de facto control over Crimea, and is not intended as a Pew Research Center position on the de jure status of the territory, which the United Nations recognizes as part of Ukraine.⁷⁰

Changes to Yemen’s coding

Starting with data covering 2016, researchers changed the way they coded social hostilities in Yemen. In previous years of the study, researchers had coded actions by Houthi rebels as social hostilities. In 2016, however, Houthis formed their own government and had control of territory that is home to more than half of Yemen’s population.⁷¹ For this reason, researchers coded actions by the Houthi in 2016 as government restrictions rather than social hostilities and continued to do so in 2018.

Displacement coding

Starting with data covering 2016, researchers changed the way they coded displacement caused by religion-related conflict or terrorism. Previously, researchers would record displacement figures that were reported in any sources. During the coding period covering 2015, researchers continued to code displacement figures in this way but also recorded displacement figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as well as the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in order to compare the results. Researchers found that the figures from the UNHCR and IDMC more closely matched United Nations estimates for new displacements in the calendar year than did the previous method of capturing displacements, which tended to overestimate the number of new displacements in a coding year because the figures often included the total number of displaced people from a country and not necessarily the newly displaced. Therefore, beginning with the data covering 2016, researchers exclusively used UNHCR and IDMC figures to more conservatively estimate the number of new displacements in the coding year. Displacement was only coded in countries with active religion-related conflict or terrorism in order to avoid including displacements from other types of conflicts or terrorism.

Country constitution audit

Researchers conducted an audit of country constitutions for coding covering the years 2007-2014. While the vast majority of country constitutions were correctly coded as to whether they included religious freedom provisions, there were a few countries where the coding was amended. These included Mexico, Costa Rica, Fiji, Iran, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Cameroon, Kenya and Mozambique. These amendments resulted in minimal changes in these countries’ overall GRI scores and did not alter overall trends represented in previous reports. Two countries – Mexico and Costa Rica – had score changes that pushed them from one category to another in 2014. Mexico’s 2014 GRI score decreased from “high” to “moderate,” while Costa Rica’s 2014 GRI score increased from “low” to “moderate.”

Potential biases

The primary sources indicate that the North Korean government is among the most repressive in the world, including toward religion. But because independent observers lack regular access to North Korea, the sources are unable to provide the kind of specific, timely information that forms the basis of this report. Therefore, North Korea is not included on either index.

This raises two important issues concerning potential information bias in the sources. The first is whether other countries that limit outsiders’ access and that may seek to obscure or distort their record on religious restrictions were adequately covered by the sources. Countries with relatively limited access have multiple primary sources of information that Pew Research Center used for its coding. Each is also covered by other secondary quantitative datasets on religious restrictions that have used a similar coding scheme, including earlier years of coded State Department report data produced by Grim at Penn State’s Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) project (four datasets); independent coding by experts at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Liberty using indexes also available from ARDA (one dataset); and content analysis of country constitutions conducted by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty (one dataset). Pew Research Center staff used these for cross-validation. Thus, contrary to what one might expect, even most countries that limit access to information tend to receive fairly extensive coverage by groups that monitor religious restrictions.

The second key question – the flipside of the first – is whether countries that provide freer access to information receive worse scores simply because more information is available on them. As described more fully in the methodology in the baseline report, Pew Research Center staff compared the length of State Department reports on freer-access countries with those of less-free-access countries. The comparison found that the median number of words was approximately three times as large for the limited-access countries as for the open-access countries. This suggests that problems in freer-access countries are generally not overreported in the State Department reports.

Only when it comes to religion-related violence and intimidation in society do the sources report more problems in the freer-access countries than in the limited-access ones. However, the Social Hostilities Index includes several measures – such as SHI Q.8 (“Did religious groups themselves attempt to prevent other religious groups from being able to operate?”) and SHI Q.11 (“Were women harassed for violating religious dress codes?”) – that are less susceptible to such reporting bias because they capture general social trends or attitudes as well as specific incidents. With these limitations in mind, it appears that the coded information on social hostilities is a fair gauge of the situation in the vast majority of countries and a valuable complement to the information on government restrictions.

Data on social impediments to religious practice can more confidently be used to make comparisons among countries with sufficient openness, which includes more than nine-in-ten countries covered in the coding. An analysis by Grim and Richard Wike, Pew Research Center’s director of global attitudes research, tested the reliability of the State Department reports on social impediments to religious practice by comparing public opinion data with data coded from the reports in previous years by Grim and experts at Penn State. They concluded that “the understanding of social religious intolerance embodied in the State Department reports is comparable with the results of population surveys and individual expert opinion.”⁷²

Coding harassment of specific religious groups

As in previous reports, this study provides a summary of the number of countries where specific religious groups faced government or social harassment. This is essentially a cross-tabulation of GRI.Q.11 (“Was there harassment or intimidation of religious groups by any level of government?”) and the first type of religious hatred or bias measured in SHI.Q.1.a. (“Did individuals face harassment or intimidation motivated by religious hatred or bias?”). For the purposes of this study, the definition of harassment includes any mention in the primary sources of an offense against an individual or group based on religious identity. Such offenses may range from physical attacks and direct coercion to more subtle forms of discrimination. But prejudicial opinions or attitudes, in and of themselves, do not constitute harassment unless they are acted upon in a palpable way.

As noted above, this study provides data on the number of countries in which different religious groups are harassed or intimidated. But the study does not assess either the severity or the frequency of the harassment in each country. Therefore, the results should not be interpreted as gauging which religious group faces the most harassment or persecution around the world.