throws societies are likely to face and mohamed, you'll say, well i'm not sure there's that clear case to be made. each of our panelists will talk for about ten to fine minutes. i'm going to -- ten to 15 minutes and then we will open it up to the audience. and i would like for you to introduce yourself, what we hope is for the last 45 minutes or sorks we have a conversation about the very important relationship between religious freedom and the ability for people to express their religion publically and whether and how it's that it influences violence in the extremist behavior. we will begin the conversations. >> i'm going to go up here. thank you for invitining me her today. the project i'm going to be telling you a little bit about is in collaboration with my could author who san society

professor in turkey, and then, i have a number of my graduate students at the university of maryland involved as well. the motivation for this project is this idea in the literature that the content of religion directly or indirectly produces conflict. and a lot of the evidence for this comes from very detailed and interesting case studies that explain how a particular group uses religion to motivate violence, what we do not have so far is more sort of generalizable theoryizing about patterns that explain the association between religion and violence across contexts and even cross time. and we have very little cross national testing of these ideas as well with the exception of

the project that i'll talk about and the one that brian grim will talk b there's not a lot of data sets that aim to test these ideas across context and time. to do this, we build on the well known minorities at risk data set. for those of you who are not aware, these were for a long time, the only cross national date and still are the most comprehensive data on ethnic group behavior, both violent and other behavior and conditions under which ethnic groups lived. but the data themselves, only looked at a subset of minority gr did not examine majorities. what we have been doing is to address this problem, this selection by us to create a

comprehensive data set that outlines all ethnic groups of the world and we call it a-mar data. and we code it for religion, first of all, the majority and minority of religion, and we create a suite of variables and we are linking the data with the data sets on conflict for now most importantly we are working with the start center, to link up the data so we can examine the effect of religion across countries and across time on terrorism. the overall theoretical idea behind the project is that the content of religion does not

have a direct effect on violence, per say, and we build here on the early work of rapport, although they explain, that members of different religions, engage in violence, they do not argue that it's because of the content of that religion, per say, and we follow in their footsteps to argue that while that is true, where majorities and minorities are divided along the lines of religious families or denominations, extremists, may use the organizational structures and the framing that they can avale themselves of, us versus then or good versus evil, to mobilized a inheritance to

commit violence, under conditions where there are reasons that are -- for example, if there are great income inequalities that may be a grievance that you can mobilize around and use the religion structures to do so. and to test that idea, we have done a number of studies, we have focused so far on democracies only, because we are still in the process of building these data and linking them to other data sets. i believe you have slides from three papers that we have produced. the first one in the first one, we explored the idea of whether in democracies, majorities and minorities from different religio liligious family this is any

difficult working together? what we found is we looked at governing coalitions, and executive coalitions, and the question we asked was, minorities, are they more or less leakly to getz invited to governing organizations than their ethnic counter parts that are belonging to the same religion as the majority. interestingly enough, we found that ethnic minority groups that belong to different religious families from the majority are actually more likely to be invited into governing coalitions if they field a separate ethnic party. our explanation for this, in liberal democracy, there's a focus on inclusion and diversity, so they see it as a

advantage to install this emphasis on including minorities. the same is not true for ethnic minorities that adhere to a difference denomination, so protestants versus catholics. ethnic groups of a different denomination are less likely to get invited to participate in the executive if they field a separate ethnic pay discovered also that if eths nick groups seek reputation through nonethnic parties, their religion does not seem to have an effect, so there's a clear signal that they are looking for that shows they're being inclusive. we take this support for our

that there's nothing conflicting about different religions or people of difference religions working together in democracy. >> we then asked about the direct effect of religious content on violence. and to this end, we examined the effect of different religions on the number of terrorists attacks perpetrated in a country, whether a country experienced terrorism, and a number of successful terrorists attacks. so, does the content of religion have an effect on whether a country is more or less likely to experience terrorism, and we did not find -- the most interesting finding was that we did not find very much of anything. where wed minority groups that were -- that adhered to islam or

christianity or what have you, it does not seem to matter. that did not make that country any more likely to experience terrorism. we did find a positive association with majority religions that adhered to, that are christianity, but we think it's a regime effect and will go away in a better controlled specification, by and large, we have found no evidence that the content of religion directly causes violence. but, the literature does show that religion is associated in many cases with violence. so the third question we asked was what are the conditions that allow extremists within ethnic groups to mobilize their

adherence to perpetrate violence. to examine this, we looked at the intersection of political access, and religion on violence. so we looked at this is your last slide. the political access and probability of terrorism by an ethnic group. we looked at ethnic minorities that are trying get into government and the time since they had last been included. and we found that ethnic minorities that adhered to different denomination and or a different religion that be the majority, when they are included in the political practice, they are less likely to perpetrate violence than are their counter parts. ethnic counter parts that adhere to the same religion as the majority. when these minority groups are

excluded, however, their at toward violence changes quickly. particularly if they belong to a different nomination than the majority. the longer they are excluded the greater the probability that the group will engage in some form of violence. we take it to mean that if there's an -- we think this is support for the idea. that if there's a grievance the minority is exclude friday government, the minority is -- there's a great income inequality. we have not tested this but it is another possible grievance. it is easier for sfreemists belonging to the group to mobilize members of the group along the lines of religion. so, to could conclude, we have not found any independent effect of the content of religion on violence.

we have found very little evidence that there's any difficulty in getting minorities and majorities of difference religions to work together in democracy, this is not as true for minorities of difference denominations but when they are excluded from full access to government, their move toward violence increases. that is it. >> thank you, so brian? >> good morning it's good to be with you this morning. i'll be talking about the restrictions on religion as part of the context of arab spring

and the after math. in the beginning i should say there's many different elements that help explain particular situations in which religious violence and extremism arises, but a growing body of cross national research however indicates that the level of government restrictions on religion in a country is also an important part of the context within which religious violence and extremism arises. so, while elevated government restrictions on religion may not necessarily be the director the proximate cause, they are a part of the forces shaping religions such as the middle east and north africa today. the date and information i'll be speaking from comes from a research study called the global religious future's project which is jointly sponsored by the pugh

charitable trust. one of the projects within the larger project looks at the level of restrictions on religion from governments as well as impediments coming from societies, including social hostilities in social religion, to create the data set, we look at major u.s. national reports. the human rights watch reports and ams the international reports and we go through them each year looking at new information provided in the reports and we answer 33 different questions about each country by looking at the reports. so it's not a survey, but instead it's a content analysis. we look at the information provided and we ask questions, so it's a very nonnormal process where we are not looking to support or defend religious freedom, but merely looking at

data on the topics. the time period of the data, covers from applied 2006, to mid two now and nine, and it's an on going study. and we will have another report, you'll have that coming up in the next couple of moss. in the report, we measure two broad types of restrictions. the first, as i mentioned is government restrictions on religion. and we use 20 difference questions to answer, to give an index score for each country of the world. and this measures not only laws and policies but also actions of governments to inhibit recommending us beliefs and practices. in may be, range from government efforts to ban particular religious faiths. prohibit conversions or give preferable treatment and it includes force against religious

groups. we use 13 questions and these are concrete actions within society or host tility, by private individuals or groups in society, and we see if there's been hate crimes, religion-related terrorism or religion related war within a country and then countries receive scores on these measures. looking at the middle east and north africa in particular, on both of these measure, government restrictions on religion, the middle east and north africa have the highest scores in both regions. one of the findings is that the restrictions, government restrictions on region in the middle east and north africa, were on the rise in the years before the revolution called arab spring. we do not make a claim that the restrictions on religion coming from governments and their tightening was the cause of arab

spring. it's an important part of the context to understand the forces active in the region today. as we looked at the data. and different religious groups that were impacted by the restrictions and hostilities one interesting finding in the middle east and north africa, was that muslims themselves faced harassment from government and others in society in a larger share of countries than did christians or jews. so it's often the minority faiths, the minority muslim groups in a country that are facing the problem. so it could be the sunnis in a difference majority country. one question we looked at in our data is whether or not

government restrictions are self re-enforcing. do more restrictions tend to the added? yes, is the answer. and one way to look at that is by looking at countries where -- that provide for religious freedom and the free practice of religion within the constitution and basic laws, versus those that do not provide for it or that contradict that provision through other types of laws and policies. and what we found is that countries where religious freedom is clearly protected and not contradicted, that restrictions tended overall to go down in countries as opposed to up during the course of our studiy. and it's only a three-year time period that i'm speaking about. >> in the countries where constitutions did not provide for religious freedom, then we saw restrictions increase.

it was predating the increase in restrictions. looking at mina, or the middle eastern, north african region. 5% fully provides for religious protection. governments are twice as likely as in the world as a whole top use violence towards religious groups. in the mina region, 2/3 of governments have displayed hos tility to religious miernnoriti compared with the rest of the world. and they did not step in to protect religious groups that were being harmed by society. 70% compared with a quarter of countries worldwide. and another striking finding in the middle east and north africa

is that 90% of countries in the region favor one religion to the exclusion of favoring compared about a quarter of countries worldwide. so one question -- so in the middle east and north africa, the basic laws are not providing for religious freedom and then we see some corliss when i've been speaking of. one basic correlation we point to in our data is that government restrictions on religion tend to be correlated with social hostilities involved in religion. as government restrictions increase social hostilities increase, or vice versa. and as monica said at the beginning, correlation is not causation, but reduce an association. in our study we did look at one particular type of law and see whether that had a clearer correlation with increases in restrictions, and this was

anti-blasphemy laws. laws that prohibit the -- prohibit blasphemy, speaking something negative about god or the divine apostasy that's leaving your faith or criticisms of religion, or defamation of religion. and we found that in countries that have these types of laws, there are -- 59 countries worldwide that had thighs types of laws, that rather -- they're often put forth as a way to help control social tension, because if you don't allow a critique of religion, then you won't stir up negative feelings. we found in the data countries with that anti-blasphemy laws have high religion and hostilities involving religion in the first place but countries that don't have them tend to have low restrictions on ri

religion. again, that's a correlation, but we looked at restrictions that have these types of laws over the three-year time. and we found countries with blasphemy laws enforced or even not enforced tended to increase in their restrictions or hostilities over the time period by margins of 5 to -- 10-1 or even 5-1, depending whether laws were enforced or not enforced. so countries with anti-blasphemy laws that correlated with increasing restrictions rather than decreasing restrictions. when the opposite side, countries that did not have anti-blasphemy laws, we found that restrictions on religion and hostilities involved religion increased and decreased in the same number of countries. so there was a bake null finding. that's moving a little beyond

correlation where one thing existed first and then what happened later. now, the reason i'm talking about anti-blasphemy laws is that, in a discussion of the middle east and north africa is that of the five major regions we looked at in our study at the pew research center, the middle east and north africa is the region that, where the largest share of countries have such laws. about 80% of countries in the middle east and north africa have such laws, and in some of the -- nuft to give one anecdote in the afterthought of -- tunisia was put into effect and they arrested a producer who was making some programs that were deemed offensive, and in his -- during his trial some supporters came out to support him in his perspective and then that resulted in scuffles and mob

violence outside the courtroom. and, again, this is just one anecdote showing that when you have such laws that that creates additional tensions and people will tend to fight over them. so looking at some global corelets of anti-blasphemy, we find globally governments that have such laws are -- 75% of government with such laws will use force against -- or have use force against religious groups compared with just 43% in the world. governments that have, countries that have anti-blasphemy laws were more likely -- five times more likely to see the government try to eliminate and entire religious group from the country than countries without. mob violence is twice as likely to occur in countries with anti-blasphemy laws and the harassment of women is five times more likely to occur in countries where anti-blasphemy laws exist.

so -- let me switch to the other side of the coin. social hostilities involving religion in mina. in mina deaths occurred in 50% of the country within the three-year period. mob violence twice as likely to occur in mina as other regions. religion-related terrorism happened in nearly every country to some extent. religion-related war affects half of countries in mina compared with 13% of countries worldwide and violence was used to enforce religions in two-thirds of the countries, in the mina region. again, this -- this body of information is providing the context within which these revolutions happen. not saying that restrictions in religion or these hostilities involving religion triggered these events directly but it's a

part of the overall package of you could say grievances or restrictions and sensitivities that are happening within the region. so the last point i'll conclude with, and i can't say that anything that i'm providing helps explain why violent -- why the uprisings happened, but there is one particular type of restriction that's very common in the middle east and north africa that occurs in nine out of ten countries in the region, and that's the governments restrict individuals right to convert. the conversion is somehow limited by the governments, and compared with only 19% of countries worldwide. so countries where government put limits on conversion are much more likely to have violence related to conversion in the country. so 83% of countries where the government limits conversion have violence related to conversion.

and then -- in countries that have no limits on conversion, only 19% have some violence related to conversion. conversion is -- is, you could think of it as a proxy measure for freedom of choice, freedom to change your ideas, freedom to have a different -- a different way of life, rather than just thinking of it in religious terms. so this is part of the overall restrictive -- the restrictions placed on people within the middle east and north africa, and may be part of the grievances that were boiling underneath in the region. and then the last note i'll have, and i won't speak on the book that was mentioned, but in the book i wrote with co-author from penn state called "the price of freedom denied: religious purse cues and conflict in the 21st century," in that book we explore more carefully these correlations and do advanced statistical tests to try to determine what's a correlation versus one that

might be, have a closer causal connection. so i can answer questions on that during the question and answer period. but, thank you, again, for your. mohammed? >> let me begin by thanking georgetown's berkley center for religious freedom and particularly timothy shaw and thomas farr for their kind invitation to be among the distinguished experts and policymakers. i'm really grateful for the opportunity. given the time limitations, i'm going to limit myself to two general points. the first relates to this overall proposition that the greater religious freedom leads to greater moderation among religious movements. and conversely, the less religious freedom leads to

greater radicalism. so what i'm going to argue in my talk today is as much as we'd like to believe that this is true, and we hope it is try, because we all want repressive regimes to reap what they sow, and to also be blessed with moderate organizations, but anecdotically from the middle east, and north africa, and much of the muslim world more generally what we see is it's not as clear cut. i'm going to point out of contrarian examples not to make a normative argument we should repress. i'm actually against that and writ an book "against repression" but just to say that as a social scientist, it's a bit more muddier than that. the second point i want to make today relates to the rise of what's known as the [ speaking in foreign language ] tendency or the [ speaking in foreign language ] the reformist current wi