Religious violence, abuse growing: world study 10/08/2011

Religious-linked violence and abuse rose around
the world between 2006 and 2009, with Christians and Muslims the most
common targets, according to a private US study released Tuesday.

An
Egyptian soldier sits guard outside the front of the Virgin Mary church
in the popular area of Imbaba in the Egyptian capital of Cairo in May
2011. Religious-linked violence and abuse rose around the world between
2006 and 2009, with Christians and Muslims the most common targets,
according to a private US study released Tuesday.

"Over the
three-year period studied, incidents of either government or social
harassment were reported against Christians in 130 countries (66
percent) and against Muslims in 117 countries (59 percent)," said the
Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life study.


In
2009, governments in 101 nations, more than half the globe, used at
least some measure of force against religious groups. A year earlier
only 91 nations had done so, the report said.


As of 2009, more
than 2.2 billion people, or nearly a third of the world?s population of
6.9 billion, lived in countries where religious restrictions had risen
substantially since 2006, the study said.


In regional terms, the
Middle East and North Africa had the highest proportion of countries in
which government-imposed restrictions hampered people's freedom to
practice their faith.


Egypt, under now-deposed leader Hosni
Mubarak, stood out, earning itself a ranking in the top five percent of
all countries in 2009 for government-imposed restrictions such as a
long-standing ban on the Muslim Brotherhood, and for social hostilities
based on religion, including attacks against Christians.


Researchers
at Pew, led by senior fellow Brian Grim, combed over 18 publicly
available sources of information including reports by the State
Department, the United Nations, the Council of the European Union, and
several rights groups to score each country on how tolerant it was of
different religions.


Egypt topped the list of countries with very
high government restrictions on religion, ahead of (in order) Iran,
Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, China, the Maldives, Malaysia, Burma, Eritrea
and Indonesia.


The country with the highest rate of
religious-linked social hostilities was Iraq, followed by India,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Israel
and Egypt.


Although no European countries made it into the top 10
of either list, five of the 10 countries in the world that saw a
substantial increase in religion-related social hostilities were in
Europe -- Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, Russia and Sweden.


And government restrictions on religion increased substantially in two European countries, France and Serbia.


In
France, President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a major speech on national
identity in 2009 that the Muslim head-to-toe covering, the burka, had no
place in French society, and lawmakers began discussing whether women
should be allowed to wear it.


The Serbian government, meanwhile,
refused to legally register evangelical Protestant groups and other
minority religions, including the Jehovah?s Witnesses, which deprived
them of the right to air programs on public media.


Religion-related
terrorist violence was included under social hostilities, and terrorist
groups with ties to religion were found to be active in more than a
third of the 198 countries included in the study.


In Russia, the
number of casualties -- people who were either killed, wounded,
kidnapped, displaced or had their property destroyed -- from
religion-linked terror attacks more than doubled in the two years ending
in 2009, compared to the two-year period ending in 2008.


Other
examples of social hostilities given in the report were the August 2008
terrorist attack in Xinjiang province, attributed by the authorities in
Beijing to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, and riots in
overwhelmingly Buddhist Tibet in 2008, which pitted ethnic Tibetans
against Han Chinese.