For immediate release: August 20, 2007
More than 200 million people have been killed because of their religious affiliation during the last 2,000 years. As religiously motivated violence escalates in Iraq, as well as in Russia, Afghanistan, and Indonesia, sociologists Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke from the Pennsylvania State University have set out to reveal the factors that motivate religious persecution around the world. Contrary to some scholars, Grim and Finke contend that it is not fundamental religious differences that lead to conflict, but rather the regulation of religion by the state that triggers unrest. Their study, in the August edition of the American Sociological Review, examines the presence or absence of religious persecution in 143 nations with populations over 2 million and finds that government regulation of religion is the strongest predictor of religious persecution. While religious persecution is evident in every region of the globe, it is far greater in the Middle East and South Asia. And although religious persecution is present regardless of a country’s predominant religion, as the percentage of Muslims in a country increases, so does social regulation of religion—which leads to increased government regulation of religion, which then triggers increased persecution. The authors contend that this downward spiral of conflict—social pressures from competing religions within a nation lead to government regulation of some faiths, which leads to increased persecution of those faiths, which leads persecuted religions to call for more government regulation, and so on—is behind the current conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq.
Note: All data on religious regulation and persecution were coded by staff members of the Association of Religion Data Archives (www.theARDA.com) and are now available online.
