Restrictions on religion, ranging from a Swiss ban on minarets to Islamist attacks on churches, rose in all major regions of the world during the study period from mid-2009 to mid-2010, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey said.
Christianity and Islam, the world's largest and second largest religions, suffered the most harassment by governments and groups or individuals, it said.
Egypt, Indonesia, Russia, Myanmar, Iran, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria ranked as the countries with the most restrictions on religion - both by their governments and by their societies - in mid-2010, the survey showed.
"A rising tide of restrictions on religion spread across the world between mid-2009 and mid-2010," the 86-page survey said.
They rose even in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, where limits on practising faith had previously been declining. Restrictions were highest in the Middle East and North Africa.
"Because some of the most restrictive countries are very populous, three-quarters of the world's approximately 7 billion people live in countries with high government restrictions on religion or high social hostilities involving religion, up from 70 per cent a year earlier," the survey said.
Pew, a Washington-based social science research centre, said the study aimed to provide a clear measure of restrictions around the world but did not attempt to evaluate them or analyse the reasons why they rose during the study period.
The United States moved from low to moderate levels of restrictions in that period as some prison inmates were prevented from practising their faith, limits on permits for religious buildings increased and faith-related attacks rose.
It noted "a spike in religion-related terrorist attacks" including the killing of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, the attempted "underwear bombing" in 2009 and the failed Times Square bombing in New York the following year.
The study saw a link between government limits on practicing certain faiths and social hostility to them, especially when official policies favoured one religion over another.
"Social hostilities involving religion were lowest among countries where governments do not harass or intimidate religious groups (and) national laws and policies protect religious freedom," it said.
The study said Christians were harassed by governments and social forces in 111 countries around the world in 2010, Muslims in 90 and Jews in 68. Harassment was reported in 16 countries for Hindus and 15 for Buddhists.
"Poor Christians" Twain said:
Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: "It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best-to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history-but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian-not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with."
By this time his theater was at work again, and before our eyes nation after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries, a mighty procession, an endless procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through seas of blood, smothered in battle smoke through which the flags glinted and the red jets from the cannon darted; and always we heard the thunder of the guns and the cries of the dying.
"And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with his evil chuckle. "Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reper forming this dull nonsense-to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurp ing little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart-if you have one-you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. . . (Mysterious Stranger.)
R.C.