Religious Freedom By Religious Background

There is similar variation in the religious background of countries with high levels of religious freedom. This is obviously a complex matter, since current regimes may reflect comparatively little of a country’s religious background. China, Tibet, and Vietnam all have a largely Buddhist background, but current religious repression comes at the hand of communist party regimes whose members profess to be atheistic materialists. Turkey has a Muslim background, but its constitutional order is highly secularist, while Muslim-background Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan suffer under repression by Soviet political holdovers (on religious freedom in secular settings, see my essay “Secular and Religious, Church and State”). Nevertheless, since the survey usually covers several countries of each religious background, the overall patterns can be revealing.



Historically, Christian countries tend to have the best scores in religious freedom, as they do in political rights and civil liberties. Of the forty-one countries surveyed that can be rated as religiously “free” (i.e., scoring three or above), thirty-five are traditionally Christian. Conversely, only two of the forty-two traditionally Christian countries surveyed (Belarus and Cuba) are “not free” (i.e., scoring six or seven). It should also be noted that these scores reflect not only religious background but also levels of wealth and economic development.



The other religiously “free” countries are Israel and three countries of largely Buddhist background—Japan, Mongolia, and Thailand. The Buddhist countries with poor scores largely reflect the presence of communist regimes in China, Tibet, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. If these are excluded, the remaining countries, except Burma, score relatively well. There are few Hindu-majority countries in the world and, of those surveyed, Nepal scores poorly on political rights and civil liberties generally, as well as on religious freedom. India is unusual in that its score for religious freedom, five, is markedly lower than its otherwise good record on democracy and on civil liberties generally. This difference reflects the upsurge within recent years of a militant Hinduism in India, coupled with attacks including large-scale massacres against religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, the growth of anti-conversion laws, and an increase in religiously based terrorism tied to Kashmir, which has in turn provoked repressive state measures.



The Muslim majority countries comprise the religious areas with the largest current restrictions on religious freedom. This pattern parallels problems with democracy, civil liberties, and economic freedom, but the negative trend with respect to religious freedom is even stronger. Of the twenty “unfree” countries and territories surveyed, twelve are Muslim majority. Of the seven countries receiving the lowest possible score, four are Muslim majority. This is a phenomenon that goes beyond the Arab world or the Middle East. In measures of, for example, electoral democracy, the Muslim world outside of the greater Middle East scores better than the Middle Eastern countries, and over half of the world’s Muslims live in electoral democracies: the problems with democracy are concentrated in the Middle East. However, in terms of religious freedom, the large Muslim democracies of Indonesia and Bangladesh score a five and a six respectively. In these cases, the problems of religious freedom are due not to government repression but to widespread societal religious violence, including religiously based terrorism, aimed at minorities and at undercutting the government. It should also be added that there are religiously free Muslim majority countries, including some of the poorest, Mali and Senegal, which are religiously freer than many European countries.