Author: Ali Ja’far/CRCS
Editor: Gregory Vanderbilt

“Where religious freedom is heading to” is the big question nowadays. It is sensitive issue in pluralistic societies where blasphemy law and religious conflict are still dominant. Speaking in the Wednesday Forum of CRCS/ICRS, Dr Paul Marshal of the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Leimena Institute in Jakarta argued that emphasizing religious freedom does not correlate with religious conflict, but the prevalence of religious restriction does. In his research summary, combining data from more than 180 countries, he showed that there are two factors related to religious conflict: religious restriction and social hostilities.