To measure global restrictions on religion in 2019 – the most recent year for which data is available – the study rates 198 countries and territories by their levels of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion. The most recent report in this series, the Center’s 12th annual, is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. The annual series on global restrictions relating to religion analyzes the extent to which governments and societies around the world impinge on religious beliefs and practices. While measures of blasphemy and apostasy laws have been included in the study since 2010, these measures do not factor into the scores countries are given in the Center’s Government Restriction Index (GRI) and Social Hostilities Index (SHI) and therefore do not affect their scores. As such, laws and policies regarding defamation of religion, religious people or groups are captured under these measures but generally are not considered anti-blasphemy laws for the purposes of this study, although in some cases there may be overlap. In addition to measuring blasphemy and apostasy, Pew Research Center measures other laws and policies that penalize hate speech related to religion, as well as speech that is critical of religion. Apostasy laws were counted when there were restrictions placed on religious conversions or if there were penalties for leaving one’s faith. In some cases, if laws were characterized as “blasphemy” laws in the sources used for the study, they were counted in this analysis even if they didn’t align with the study’s specific criteria for measuring blasphemy. The study captures whether laws or policies criminalizing blasphemy and apostasy exist (even if they were not enforced during the year). Pew Research Center measures government regulations on speech or actions deemed to be blasphemy or apostasy as part of our research on global restrictions on religion.

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