According to a report from the Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Somalia and Israel have the least religious diversity among nations.
The Pew Report also says they lead the list of worldwide nations with faith-motivated conflict.
The Pew study compared the population of each nation that belongs to eight major groups. This study was completed in 2010.
Officials at Pew say a major challenge was gathering information to compare. The Pew study focused on five major world religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. The study placed the remaining population into religions or sects.
Pew officials went country-to-country gathering information put together from censuses, large-scale surveys and official population registers. To gather information from European nations, Pew officials obtained the help of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
The Pew Center classified the nations by developing a system of four ranges. Countries with scores of 7.0 or higher had a “very high” degree of religious diversity. The countries with a 5.3 to 6.9 percent score were categorized as “high”. If the nations had a 3.1 to 5.2 percent range, the classification was “moderate.” The others were classified as low.
According to the Pew report faith-based violence is classified as “armed conflict or terrorism,” mob or sectarian violence, harassment over attire for religious reasons, or other religion-related intimidation or abuse.”
According to the survey Afghanistan and Somalia — with mainly Muslim populations — are among the 10 least diverse nations in the world.
The Pew Survey found the Asia-Pacific region is comprised of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and those claiming no religion. This region, according to the survey, is the most diverse.
Pew officials found that Canada and Australia have high levels of diversity and low-to-moderate levels of hostility.
Some African nations, including Benin, Ghana and Mozambique as well as some Latin American nations such as Cuba, Guyana, Suriname and Uruguay also have high religious diversity levels and low faith-motivated hostility.
The Pew Survey found mixed results concerning diversity and faith-based violence.
For example, Afghanistan and Somalia are among the 10 least diverse nations in the world, and lead the world in faith-motivated violence.
But China is very religiously diverse, but has seen a tremendous amount of conflict motivated by faith.
Many Latin American countries are dominated by Christian denominations but have experienced very little faith-based conflict.
The study does conclude that religious pluralism itself might help reduce violence, or nations that have high levels of diversity might also have people less inclined to violence.
One difficulty Pew officials found in gathering information was how faith-based violence might be impacted by different denominations within religions. Pew cites as an example Sunnis and Shias in Muslim countries or Protestants and Catholics in Christian Countries. Pew officials say difficulty in gathering data made it impossible to make those distinctions. A difficulty here would be, as an example, determining if violence among these groups is motivated by faith-based issues, or politically based issues done in the name of Islam.
Paul Marshall is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. He is the author and editor of more than twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
The IRD asked Marshall to analyze the Pew study and determine if there is any direct correlation between lack of religious diversity in a nation and an increase in faith-based violence.
“I am a great admirer of Pew and use their materials, although in this case I am not sure the correlation between religious diversity and violence tells us much,” Marshall explained. “The level of violence is higher because of current problems in the Muslim-majority world, which countries are usually not religiously diverse.”
Marshall also points out another non-diverse region is Latin America — and there the violence is low.
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