Religion, Law and Social Conflict in the 21st Century: Findings from Sociological Research

Abstract

Social hostilities involving religion have risen during the first decade of the 21st century, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life. Of the countries where social hostilities involving religion rose substantially, half were in Europe. In the Middle East–North Africa region, government restrictions on religion substantially increased in the years immediately preceding the region-wide revolutions collectively known as Arab Spring. Recent advances in measuring levels of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion from the Pew Research Center and Penn State University's Association of Religion Data Archives provide new ways to analyse important questions related to religion and law. This article looks at four specific questions addressed by this research: How do legal and social restrictions on religion relate to violent religious persecution? Does official favouritism of one religion correlate with more or less conflict involving religion? Do constitutional protections for religious freedom coincide with increased or decreased restrictions? And do laws prohibiting blasphemy, apostasy or defamation of religion relate to more or to less overall contentions involving religion?