Religious majorities and restrictions on religion.

AuthorScharffs, Brett G.
PositionReligious Liberty and the Free Society: Celebrating 50 Years of 'Dignitatis Humanae'

INTRODUCTION

What if dominant religious majorities are the most significant obstacle to religious freedom, and religious doctrine the most powerful force in eliminating that obstacle?

Social scientists studying freedom of religion and belief have focused upon two types of restrictions on religious freedom, formal restrictions that take the form of laws and other official legal limitations on freedom of religion and belief, and informal restrictions that take the form of social hostilities towards religion or towards particular religious groups, usually minorities. This Article seeks to build upon this work in three ways: first, by noting the striking correlations between countries with very high or high legal restrictions and social hostilities regarding religion and the frequent presence of a dominant religious group in those countries; second, by suggesting that dominant national religious majority groups may create an even more formidable obstacle to religious freedom than laws and regulations and other forms of social hostility towards religious groups; and third, by noting a dramatic exception to this pattern, countries where Catholics are the dominant religious group. Countries with Catholic majorities are, for the most part, places where there are not high legal or social restrictions on freedom of religion. This Article concludes by considering the role that Dignitatis Humanae may have played in this remarkable pattern of low legal restrictions and social hostilities in Catholic-majority countries.

  1. LEGAL RESTRICTIONS AND SOCIAL HOSTILITIES

    A series of studies published by the Pew Research Center ("Pew") over the past decade paint a rather dire picture of the state of religious freedom in the world, as well as trends regarding legal restrictions and social hostilities involving religion.

    The studies rate 198 countries and self-governing territories (197 before the addition of South Sudan in the most recent report) according to two indexes: the "Government Restrictions Index" (GRI), which measures "government laws, policies and actions that restrict religious beliefs and practices," (1) and the "Social Hostilities Index" (SHI), which measures "acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations or groups in society." (2) The GRI watches twenty measures of restriction, "including efforts by government to ban particular faiths, prohibit conversion, limit preaching or give preferential treatment to one or more religious groups." (3) The thirteen measures of the SHI consider such factors as "mob or sectarian violence, harassment over attire for religious reasons or other religion-related intimidation or abuse." (4)

    In their survey published in February 2015, Pew reported that thirty-nine percent of the world's countries (2013 data) had high or very high overall restrictions on religious freedom, with sixty-one percent having moderate or low restrictions on religious freedom. (5) Because the countries with high or very high restrictions include some with very large populations, such as India and China, these countries include more than three-fourths (seventy-seven percent) of the world's population, with twenty-three percent of the world's population living in countries with moderate or low restrictions on religious freedom. (6) These graphs represent a composite of both legal and social restrictions on religion (7):

    39% of the world's countries have high or very high restrictions on religious freedom. High or Very High 39% Moderate or Low 61% Note: Table made from bar graph. These 39% of countries include more than three-fourths (77%) of the world's population. High or Very High 77% Moderate or Low 23% Note: Table made from bar graph. The trends over time between 2007 and 2013 are also discouraging, with the percentage of countries reporting high or very high restrictions on religion trending generally upwards, from twenty-nine percent in 2007 to thirty-nine at the end of (2013). (8) During that same period of time, the percentage of countries with moderate or low restrictions has decreased from seventy-one percent to sixty-one percent. (9)

    Again, because many of the countries with high or very high restrictions have large populations, the percentage of the global population living in countries with high or very high restrictions has increased, from sixty-eight percent in 2007 to seventy-seven percent at the end of (2013) . (10) The percentage of the world's population living in countries with moderate restrictions has remained relatively steady, increasing from eighteen percent to nineteen percent, and the percentage of the world's population living in countries with low restrictions has decreased from fourteen percent to four percent. (11) Thus, over this period of time there has been an approximate increase of ten percent in the world's population living in countries with high or very high restrictions, and a decrease of ten percent in those living in countries with low restrictions on religious freedom. (12)

    High or Very Moderate to Low High Restrictions Restrictions June 2007 68 32 June 2008 67 33 June 2009 70 31 June 2010 75 25 Dec. 2011 74 26 Dec. 2012 76 24 Dec. 2013 77 23 Note: Table made from bar graph. II. CORRELATIONS BETWEEN VERY HIGH AND HIGH RESTRICTIONS ON RELIGION AND A DOMINANT RELIGIOUS GROUP

    In reviewing this Pew data, it is noteworthy that most of the countries with very high or high legal or social restrictions on religion are places where the largest religious group represents either a supermajority (which here is calculated as being over seventy percent) or at least a majority (over fifty percent). Utilizing statistics involving self-reporting as a way of establishing religious affiliation, there is a strong set of correlations. (13)

    1. Government/Legal Restrictions on Religious Freedom and Dominant Religious Groups

      There is a high correlation between countries with very high or high legal restrictions on religious freedom and countries where the dominant religious majority group represents a supermajority of more than seventy percent of the population of that country. In the February 2015 Pew Report, there were eighteen countries with very high and thirty-six countries with high government/legal restrictions on religious freedom. (14)

      GOVERNMENT/LEGAL RESTRICTIONS ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS (2013)

      VERY HIGH

      China

      Indonesia

      Uzbekistan

      Iran

      Egypt

      Afghanistan

      Saudi Arabia

      Burma (Myanmar)

      Russia

      Turkey

      Azerbaijan

      Sudan

      Brunei

      Tajikistan

      Singapore

      HIGH

      Maldives

      Bahrain

      Pakistan

      Turkmenistan

      Iraq

      Belarus

      Morocco

      Jordan

      Western Sahara

      Laos

      Vietnam

      Algeria

      Qatar

      Kazakhstan

      Mauritania

      Yemen

      Kyrgyzstan

      Israel

      Kuwait

      Bulgaria

      Sri Lanka

      Bangladesh

      Armenia

      Cuba

      Oman

      Djibouti

      India

      Angola

      Bhutan

      Tunisia

      Libya

      UAE

      Ethiopia

      Romania

      Germany

      1. Very High Legal Restrictions

        Fourteen of the eighteen countries with very high legal restrictions have a dominant religious group of seventy percent of the population or higher.

        Many of these countries have a Muslim supermajority, but there is also one country with a Buddhist supermajority (Myanmar/Burma), and one with a Christian supermajority (Russia). (15)

        [GRAPHIC OMITTED]

        Of the remaining four countries with very high legal restrictions, the dominant religious group represents more than half of the population in only one: Malaysia (with Muslims representing over sixty percent of the population). (16) Eritrea, Singapore, and China are the only countries with very high legal restrictions that do not have a specific religious majority comprising more than sixty percent of the population. (17)

        [GRAPHIC OMITTED]

        In Eritrea, where population data are particularly difficult to obtain, 2012-2013 Pew research estimated that Christians (three major denominations combined) comprised about sixty-three percent of the population, while thirty-six percent of Eritreans followed Sunni Islam. (18) For the same period, however, and continuing to the present, United Nations estimates put the populations of Christians and Muslims at essentially the same number. (19)

        China has an official state ideology of atheism. However, a Chinese Family Panel Studies survey of 2012 asserted that only 6.3% of Chinese should be characterized as atheist in the sense of not believing in the supernatural. The others are not religious in the sense that they do not belong to an organized religion, while they pray to or worship gods and ancestors in the manner of the traditional popular religion. (20)

        In addition, an apparently government-tolerated survey conducted by East China Normal University in 2007 found that an estimated 300 million people, some 31.4% of the adult population, were "religious believers." (21) Other reports have asserted that "from 30% to 80%" of Chinese are believers in some sort of "folk religion." (22)

      2. High Legal Restrictions

        Thirty of the thirty-six countries with high legal restrictions have a dominant religious group of seventy percent of the population or higher. (23)

        This list is again dominated by countries with a Muslim supermajority, but there is also a smattering of countries with Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Buddhist supermajorities.

        [GRAPHIC OMITTED]

        Of the remaining six countries with high legal restrictions, the dominant religious group represents more than sixty percent of the population in five of them. (24)

        Vietnam is the only country with high legal restrictions where the largest religious group does not represent more than sixty percent of the population. Vietnam is another country where, until recently, the government has pursued an aggressive policy of regulating religion and promoting atheism. (25)

        [GRAPHIC OMITTED]

      3. Strong Correlations

        These correlations are striking. Of the fifty-four countries with very high or high legal restrictions, forty-four have a dominant religious group of seventy percent or more of the population, and six of the remaining ten have a dominant religious group of sixty percent or more of the...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT