In the one-year period ending in mid-2010, 75 percent of the world’s population lived in a nation with high or very high restrictions on religious beliefs or practices, according to the study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The increasingly hostile climate doesn’t come as a surprise to John Pinna, director of government relations for the American Islamic Congress.
“As countries, particularly developing nations, search for stability, religious persecution is a tool for consolidation of authority,” Pinna said. “Furthermore, in the developing world, governments lack the capacity to protect vulnerable populations from non-state actors who have their own political agendas.”
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