Since 1998 the International Religious Freedom Act has required the U.S. State Department to author reports on the state of religious freedom in every foreign country. These reports have made available a rich set of data, which Brian Grim and Roger Finke have coded and analyzed with great effectiveness in their book, The Price of Freedom Denied. This book is a good read, and its sixth chapter sets out a provocative thesis on the relationship between Sharia and religious persecution, which is sure to be a controversial advancement of the conversation.
The first thing this data allows the authors to observe is that worldwide religious persecution (defined as physical abuse or displacement from homes because of religion) is both “pervasive and pernicious” (21). Of 143 countries analyzed, 86% have documented cases of religious persecution, spanning every region of the globe (18–19). Nor is a religious persecution merely unsystematic instance of individual animosity. Rather, during the examined time period (mid-2000 to mid-2007) 36 countries evidenced a thousand or more instances of religious persecution, and 25 evidenced 10,000 or more instance of religious persecution.
The data also allow Grim and Finke to develop a thesis on the cause of religious persecution. It is grounded in the philosophies of Voltaire, Adam Smith, and David Hume, all of whom thought that intra-societal religious pluralism lessened rather than increased religious conflict. Hence, the core thesis of The Price of Freedom Denied is that “religious restrictions — composed of social and government restrictions — help explain violent religious persecution” (74).
Grim and Finke first test this hypothesis against Huntington's contention that religious violence arises from a “clash of civilizations.” The results: government restrictions are a powerful predictor of religious persecution, but not vice versa; social restrictions also directly predict levels of persecution, but the most robust finding is that social restrictions increase religious persecution by increasing governmental restrictions. This leads to a cycle of persecution. “Social restrictions lead to higher levels of government restrictions, which lead to more violent persecutions, which increase the level of social restrictions” (80). Other possible predictors of religious persecution (armed conflict, population size, democracy, economics, ties between ethnicity and religious affiliation) “each hold an indirect relationship with persecution through their close association with social and government restrictions” (81).
Grim and Finke then support their thesis with cases studies. To select their cases, they first plot each country along two dimensions, its degree of social restrictions and its degree of government restrictions. They locate and label six “ideal types” of countries within this scatter plot and give a detailed analysis of one country from each ideal type. The resulting cases studies (of Japan, Brazil, Nigeria, China, India, and Iran) are all highly illuminating. The ideal types will be an important theoretical tool for future analyses, even if (but perhaps because) comparativists and regional experts will find much to contend with regarding the contours and membership of these ideal types.
Grim and Finke also observe that the data show that religious persecution “is present in every country with a Muslim-majority with a population of two million or more during the first seven years of the 21st century compared with 78 percent of Christian-majority countries and 86 percent of other countries” (169). Religious persecution is also more severe in Muslim-majority countries during the time period of this study. They do not timidly ignore this issue, but face it head on and advance what will be a contentious and much discussed thesis.
Initially, they find that the heightened levels of religious persecution follows the core thesis; high levels of both social and governmental restrictions on religion in Muslim-majority countries predicts high levels of persecution, and high levels of social restrictions “fuel a demand for further governmental restrictions” (181). Their explanation for the heightened levels of social restrictions and consequent demands for governmental restrictions is sure to be controversial and worthy of study: rival attempts to implement differing interpretations of Sharia leads to social restrictions, which leads to religious persecution, which leads to heightened efforts by the government to restrict religious liberty. Several dogmas and procedures of Sharia law are integral (and not merely reactionary post-colonial elements) to this movement: its strict prohibition of apostasy and heresy, its assignment of secondary (or worse) status to members of other faiths (the dhimmi), the call for a restoration of Dar al-Islam (“realm of submission”), Sharia's refusal to relax or alter its demands for differing “spheres” of life, and the decoupling of the Sharia courts from the authority of the state all contribute, according to Grim and Finke, to increased levels of religious persecution in Muslim-majority countries. Contrary to the clash of civilizations hypothesis, then, persecution is “primarily a struggle within Islam rather than with the West” (189).
The Price of Freedom Denied is worthy of study because it employs new and interesting data. It confirms a comforting thesis (that religious freedom means less religious persecution) while boldly advancing one both more contentious and worthy of further study and discussion.
