Religious Freedom & Restrictions

Thirty-eight European governments harassed religious groups in limited or widespread ways in 2015, while 24 used some type of force against religious groups.

Government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion increased in 2015 for the first time in three years. Government harassment and use of force surged in Europe, as did social hostilities against Muslims.

There were 91 reported aggravated or simple assaults motivated by anti-Muslim bias in 2015, just two shy of the 93 reported in 2001.

Our new survey focusing on contraception, same-sex marriage and transgender rights finds the public closely divided over some – though not all – of these issues.

The U.S. public expresses a clear consensus on the contentious question of whether employers who have religious objections to contraception should be required to provide it in health insurance plans for their employees.

In 2014, the median level of religious hostilities in the Middle East and North Africa reached a level four times that of the global median.

Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey had some of the highest levels of religious restrictions in 2014.

Worldwide, both government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion decreased modestly from 2013 to 2014 despite a rise in religion-related terrorism, according to Pew Research Center’s latest annual study on global restrictions on religion.1 Of the 198 countries included in the study, 24% had high or very high levels of government restrictions in […]

Government restrictions on religion and social hostilities related to religion decreased somewhat between 2013 and 2014, the second consecutive year of such declines.