Harassment of religious groups hit new peak in 2022, latest research finds

Religious persecution reached new levels around the world in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.

Pew’s 15th annual report on the extent to which governments and societies impinge on religious beliefs and practices found that “harassment of religious groups by governments or social actors occurred in 192 out of the world’s 198 countries and territories” in 2022.  

The findings represent “an increase by two countries from 2021 and a new peak level for the study,” said Pew, a Washington, D.C., think tank that studies social issues, public opinion and trends across the U.S and globally. 

Some key findings include: 

• Governments persecuted individuals for their religious beliefs and practices in 186 countries in 2022, up from 183 countries the previous year. 

• Social groups or private individuals targeted people based on their religion in 164 countries, mirroring Pew’s findings in 2021. 

• Altogether, “governments and/or social actors harassed religious groups in 192 countries, including 158 countries where both governments and social groups or private individuals engaged in harassment.” 

Consistent with its previous research, Christians and Muslims, as the two largest religious groups in the world, “were targets of harassment – either physical or verbal – in a greater number of countries in 2022 than any other groups analyzed in the study.” The latest study found Christians were targeted by governments or social entities in 166 countries, up from 160 in 2021. Similarly, Muslims were harassed in 148 countries in 2022, up from 141 the previous year. 

Pew also found that Jews faced harassment from governments and social entities in 90 countries, down from 91 in 2021. “As in previous years,” noted Pew, “Jews in 2022 were the religious group that faced harassment in the third-highest number of countries, even though they comprise a comparatively small share (0.2%) of the world’s population.” 

As with its past reports, Pew focused on five major forms of physical harassment religious groups faced: property damage, assaults, detentions, displacement and killings. In 2022, at least one of those elements was in play in 145 of the 198 countries, up from 137 in 2021. “This included 111 countries where governments used physical force against religious groups (up from 100 in 2021) and 111 countries where social groups or private individuals carried out such incidents (up from 101 in 2021),” noted Pew. 

The most common form of physical harassment in 2022 was property damage, which happened in 120 countries. There were reports of detentions in 93 countries, physical assaults in 89 countries, displacements due to religious conflict or violence in 51 countries and killings over religious disputes in 49 countries. 

In 2022, among the 25 most populous countries, Pew found Egypt, India, Pakistan, Iran and Nigeria had the highest overall levels of restrictions on religious groups from both government and social hostilities, while Japan, South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Democratic Republic of the Congo recorded the lowest overall levels of restrictions.