Secularism in Muslim-Majority Societies
Secularism in Muslim-Majority Societies
Historical Background
Secularism has developed differently across Muslim-majority societies than it has in Europe or North America. Rather than representing a single model, secularism ranges from strict constitutional separation of religion and state to systems in which governments recognize Islam as the official religion while maintaining elected institutions and varying degrees of religious freedom. Historical experiences with colonialism, nationalism, constitutional reform, and state-building have shaped these diverse approaches.
Democracy, Religion, and Constitutional Government
Many scholars argue that democracy and Islam are not inherently incompatible, while emphasizing that constitutional safeguards, independent courts, pluralism, and civil liberties are essential for protecting both religious freedom and democratic governance. The collection explores competing views on the relationship between Islamic political thought, secular constitutionalism, and representative government.
Political Islam and Islamist Movements
The material examines Islamist political parties across numerous countries, exploring how participation in elections, institutional constraints, and political competition influence their development. It distinguishes between democratic participation by religious parties, conservative religious movements, and violent extremist organizations while highlighting continuing debates over the role of religion in public life.
Secularism and State Authority
Many governments regulate religious institutions even while describing themselves as secular. The articles examine how states oversee mosques, religious education, official clerics, and family law, illustrating that secularism often involves managing religion rather than completely separating religion from government.
Religious Freedom and Human Rights
Religious liberty, minority rights, freedom of conscience, gender equality, and freedom of expression appear throughout the collection. Particular attention is given to blasphemy laws, apostasy laws, restrictions on religious conversion, personal-status law, and the legal treatment of religious minorities across Muslim-majority countries.
Regional Case Studies
The collection surveys a wide range of countries and regions, including:
- Turkey and the transformation of Kemalist secularism
- Tunisia and the constitutional compromises of the Arab Spring
- Egypt's struggle between military rule, Islamism, and secular political movements
- Indonesia and Malaysia as diverse democratic models with significant Islamic influence
- Pakistan and Bangladesh's constitutional and religious evolution
- Iran's theocratic political system
- Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies
- Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and additional Muslim-majority societies in Africa, Central Asia, and the Balkans
These case studies illustrate how historical traditions, constitutional design, political institutions, and social movements produce widely differing relationships between religion and the state.
Comparative Themes
The sources compare official state religions, constitutional secularism, religious nationalism, democratic institutions, authoritarian government, judicial independence, civil society, minority protections, women's rights, and the balance between religious identity and equal citizenship. They also examine how constitutional systems attempt to reconcile majority religious traditions with universal civil and political rights.
Contemporary Challenges
Current debates include democratic backsliding, religious nationalism, expanding executive power, Islamist and anti-Islamist political movements, constitutional reform, religious freedom, family law, women's rights, minority protections, and the continuing tension between state authority and individual liberty. The collection demonstrates that Muslim-majority societies encompass a broad spectrum of constitutional arrangements rather than a single model of governance.
Conclusion
Secularism in Muslim-majority societies is neither uniform nor static. The evidence presented in this collection shows significant diversity in constitutional structures, political institutions, and religious policies across the Islamic world. While some governments maintain strong secular traditions and others integrate religion directly into state institutions, nearly all continue to debate the appropriate relationship between Islam, democracy, constitutional government, human rights, and national identity.
Comparative Studies and Regional Overviews
Religious Freedom Cannot Survive Without Democracy
| Freedom House | Freedom House | April 8, 2026
Examines how democratic institutions, independent courts, civil society, and political participation protect freedom of religion and belief, including in societies where one religion forms a large majority.
The New Global Struggle Over Gender, Rights, and Family Values
Explores international conflicts over gender and family policy, including efforts in several Muslim-majority countries to weaken secular marriage and family-law systems.
Religious Nationalism Around the World
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | January 28, 2025
Compares attitudes toward religion, government, citizenship, and national identity across dozens of countries, showing considerable variation in religious nationalism.
Islamist Parties and Power in Democratic Nation-States
| European Center for Populism Studies | ECPS | October 30, 2024
Compares Islamist parties in six Muslim-majority countries and considers how electoral competition, institutional constraints, and political pragmatism affect their behavior.
Protecting the Rights of Religious Minorities Is Crucial to Protecting Democracy Itself
| Nolen Deibert | Freedom House | December 7, 2023
Argues that religious freedom and minority protections are essential components of democracy rather than privileges that majorities may withdraw.
Freedom in the Muslim World
| Mustafa Akyol | Cato Institute | December 2021
Compares personal freedom across Muslim-majority states and argues that countries with secular or religiously limited legal systems generally protect individual liberty more effectively.
Many Countries Favor Specific Religions, Officially or Unofficially
| Michael Lipka | Pew Research Center | October 3, 2017
Surveys official religions and government favoritism worldwide, finding that Islam is the faith most frequently established as an official state religion.
Islamic States and Muslim Secularism
| Kamran Bokhari | Geopolitical Futures | April 18, 2017
Discusses how formally secular Muslim-majority republics often retain constitutional, symbolic, or institutional commitments to Islam.
Non-Western Ideas for Democratic Renewal
| Richard Youngs | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | April 21, 2016
Examines democratic ideas outside the West, including debates over secular law, religious participation, pluralism, and women’s rights in Muslim societies.
Religion and Secularism in the Middle East: A Primer
| Barak Mendelsohn | Foreign Policy Research Institute | November 25, 2015
Traces the historical evolution of religious and political authority in the Middle East from premodern empires through colonialism and modern nation-states.
The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | April 30, 2013
Presents extensive survey findings on Muslim attitudes toward sharia, democracy, religious freedom, morality, gender, and the proper relationship between religion and government.
Democratization Theory and the Arab Spring
| Alfred Stepan and Juan J. Linz | Journal of Democracy | July 2013
Uses Indonesia, Turkey, Senegal, Tunisia, and Egypt to examine the institutional accommodations between religious citizens and democratic governments.
Crisis of Modernity and Secularism: Egypt, Turkey and Bangladesh
| Lailufar Yasmin | openDemocracy | August 17, 2013
Compares conflicts over secularism in three Muslim-majority countries and argues that secular politics must address cultural authenticity as well as constitutional institutions.
Universal Values and Muslim Democracy
| Anwar Ibrahim | Journal of Democracy | July 2006
Rejects claims that Islam is inherently incompatible with democracy and calls for political systems grounded in freedom, accountability, pluralism, and human dignity.
Religion and Democracy
| Jean Bethke Elshtain | Journal of Democracy | April 2009
Considers the varied relationships between religious traditions and democratic government, including competing interpretations of Islam’s democratic potential.
Turkey and the Transformation of Kemalist Secularism
The Dual Imperative in Turkish Foreign Policy
| Sinan Ülgen and Alper Coşkun | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | June 26, 2026
Examines Turkey’s political and foreign-policy transformation, including changes in the Diyanet and the weakening of older constitutional restraints on religious politics.
Turkey: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews Turkey’s declining political rights and civil liberties under a government that has combined electoral authoritarianism with increasingly religious nationalism.
Turkish Secularism Is Nothing but an Empty Shell
| Nicolas Bourcier | Le Monde | March 31, 2024
Interviews political scientist Şebnem Gümüşçü about the gradual Islamization of Turkish state institutions despite the republic’s formally secular constitution.
Turkey’s Growing Religious Nationalism
| Council on Foreign Relations | Council on Foreign Relations | 2023
Explains how the Turkish government has promoted a synthesis of Sunni religious identity, nationalism, centralized executive power, and conservative social policy.
Turkey’s New Politics of Religion
| Marc Pierini | Carnegie Europe | November 2018
Examines how state institutions, education policy, mosque administration, and party politics have altered Turkey’s secular public order.
Turkey’s Failed Foreign Policy
| Ömer Taşpınar | Brookings Institution | 2015
Connects Turkey’s domestic ideological polarization and the governing party’s Islamist roots to changes in its regional strategy.
The Roots of Turkey’s Authoritarianism
| Berk Esen and Şebnem Gümüşçü | Journal of Democracy | April 2016
Argues that Turkey’s authoritarian turn developed through the concentration of power, partisan control of institutions, and erosion of secular democratic checks.
Turkey: The New Model?
| Ömer Taşpınar | Brookings Institution | April 25, 2012
Assesses whether Turkey once offered a workable model for combining a secular constitution, democratic elections, economic development, and an Islamic-oriented governing party.
The Turkish Model: The History of a Misleading Idea
| Steven A. Cook | Brookings Institution | 2012
Questions portrayals of Turkey as a straightforward model of democratic secularism for Arab societies emerging from authoritarian rule.
Islam and Secularism in the Arab World: Lessons from Turkey
| Brookings Institution | Brookings Institution | February 21, 2012
Presents competing arguments about whether Turkish secularism offers useful lessons for balancing religion, democratic participation, and state neutrality.
The Rise and Fall of Turkey’s Soft Power Discourse
| Pınar Akpınar | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | May 2015
Discusses Turkey’s attempt to present itself as a democratic Muslim power before domestic authoritarianism and regional conflict weakened that image.
Turkey’s Diyanet and Political Islam
| Middle East Institute | Middle East Institute | 2019
Explores the expanding budget, international activities, and political role of Turkey’s state-controlled Directorate of Religious Affairs.
The Decline of Turkish Democracy
| Ergun Özbudun | Journal of Democracy | July 2014
Describes how executive domination, polarization, restrictions on opposition, and the politicization of religion undermined Turkey’s democratic system.
Turkey’s Local Elections and the Future of the Opposition
| Sinan Ülgen | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | April 2024
Examines secular and pluralistic opposition coalitions challenging the governing party’s combination of religious conservatism and centralized rule.
Turkey’s Authoritarian Drift
| Ömer Taşpınar | Foreign Affairs | April 3, 2014
Analyzes the growing conflict between Erdoğan’s majoritarian political project and Turkey’s secular institutions, independent media, and judicial safeguards.
Tunisia, Egypt, and the Arab Spring
Tunisia: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Documents the dismantling of Tunisia’s post-revolution democratic institutions and the narrowing of political space for secularists, Islamists, and other opposition groups.
Tunisia’s Authoritarian Descent
| Monica Marks | Journal of Democracy | 2023
Explains how President Kais Saied dismantled democratic institutions by exploiting popular frustration with parties, including the Islamist Ennahda movement.
Tunisia’s Democracy Verges on Collapse
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | July 22, 2022
Warns that constitutional changes concentrated power in the presidency and endangered the pluralistic political settlement created after the Arab Spring.
How Tunisia’s Democracy Unraveled
| Sarah Yerkes | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | July 2021
Examines the institutional, economic, and political conflicts that weakened cooperation between Tunisia’s secular and religious political currents.
Tunisia’s Ennahda: Rethinking Islamism in the Context of ISIS and the Egyptian Coup
| Monica Marks | Brookings Institution | August 2015
Describes Ennahda’s attempts to distinguish democratic Muslim politics from revolutionary Islamism and violent jihadism.
The Tunisian Exception: Success and Limits of Consensus
| Alfred Stepan | Journal of Democracy | April 2015
Attributes Tunisia’s democratic progress partly to compromises between secular and religious actors over constitutional identity and political participation.
Why Tunisia’s Transition Worked
| Marwan Muasher | Foreign Affairs | January 30, 2014
Argues that compromise between Islamists, secular parties, unions, and civil society enabled Tunisia to avoid the polarization experienced elsewhere.
Tunisia’s New Constitution: A Compromise Between Islamists and Secularists
| Shadi Hamid | Brookings Institution | January 2014
Explains how Tunisia’s 2014 constitution balanced an Islamic national identity with civil government, individual rights, and freedom of conscience.
Egypt: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews Egypt’s authoritarian system, in which the state represses both Islamist movements and independent secular, liberal, and human-rights organizations.
Egypt’s Secular Political Parties: A Struggle for Identity and Independence
| Michelle Dunne and Amr Hamzawy | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | March 2015
Studies the organizational weakness, ideological divisions, and strategic dilemmas of Egypt’s non-Islamist political parties.
Egypt’s Resurgent Authoritarianism
| Jason Brownlee | Journal of Democracy | July 2014
Explains how military rule returned after conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood, secular opposition groups, old-regime institutions, and the security establishment.
The Egyptian Constitution: Islamists versus Secularists
| Tamara Cofman Wittes | Brookings Institution | 2012
Examines disputes over sharia, religious authority, women’s rights, minority protections, and executive power during Egypt’s constitutional transition.
Egypt’s Secular-Islamist Divide
| Nathan J. Brown | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | July 2013
Analyzes how distrust between Islamist and non-Islamist political camps contributed to democratic breakdown and military intervention.
Islamists and the Arab Spring
| Alfred Stepan | Journal of Democracy | April 2013
Compares the political behavior of Islamist parties and the institutional conditions affecting democratic coexistence in several Arab transitions.
What Is the Future of Political Islam?
| Brookings Institution | Brookings Institution | February 15, 2017
Brings together scholars to discuss how Islamist movements have adapted to elections, repression, secular opposition, state institutions, and generational change.
Indonesia and Malaysia
Indonesia: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews Indonesia’s electoral democracy while documenting restrictions involving blasphemy laws, religious minorities, local sharia regulations, and political polarization.
Religious Intolerance and Discriminatory Regulations Against Minorities in Indonesia
| Andreas Harsono | Human Rights Watch | October 29, 2024
Documents discriminatory regulations and bureaucratic barriers affecting Christian, Ahmadi, Shia, Indigenous-faith, and other minority communities.
In Indonesia, a Rising Tide of Religious Intolerance
| Andreas Harsono | Human Rights Watch | March 24, 2023
Examines the growing use of blasphemy rules, mandatory religious clothing, and local regulations that undermine Indonesia’s pluralist constitutional tradition.
Indonesia’s Blasphemy Law Threatens Religious Freedom
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | October 31, 2022
Argues that criminal penalties for religious expression enable majoritarian pressure and conflict with constitutional commitments to pluralism.
The Politics of Religious Intolerance in Indonesia
| Joshua Kurlantzick | Council on Foreign Relations | 2019
Discusses how electoral competition, conservative religious mobilization, and weak law enforcement have increased pressure on religious minorities.
Indonesia’s Democratic Regression
| Thomas Power | Journal of Democracy | July 2018
Explains how illiberal politics, religious polarization, corruption, and weakened institutions have threatened Indonesia’s democratic gains.
Indonesia’s Religious Intolerance Problem
| Jonathan C. Paris | Brookings Institution | May 24, 2017
Examines the political mobilization surrounding Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama and the growing public influence of conservative Islamic groups.
What Most People Get Wrong About Political Islam
| Shadi Hamid | Brookings Institution | October 1, 2014
Argues that support for some role for sharia extends beyond formal Islamist parties and must be understood within local democratic politics, including Indonesia.
Islam, Nationalism and Democracy: A Political Biography of Mohammad Natsir
| Audrey R. Kahin | NUS Press | 2012
Uses the career of Indonesian statesman Mohammad Natsir to explore conflicts among Islamic politics, nationalism, constitutional democracy, and the secular state.
Indonesia’s Pancasila: A Secular or Religious Ideology?
| East Asia Forum | East Asia Forum | October 3, 2017
Examines competing interpretations of Pancasila as a framework for religious pluralism, national unity, and state recognition of faith.
Malaysia: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews Malaysia’s electoral institutions alongside legal advantages for Islam, restrictions on religious conversion, and unequal treatment of minority communities.
Malaysia’s Political Polarization: Race, Religion, and Reform
| Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | August 2020
Explores how ethnic identity, Islamic politics, patronage, and party competition reinforce polarization in Malaysia.
Malaysia’s Shifting Political Landscape
| Joshua Kurlantzick | Council on Foreign Relations | 2018
Discusses democratic reform and the continuing influence of Malay nationalism, Islamic institutions, and identity-based political coalitions.
Islamization and the Future of Malaysian Democracy
| Bridget Welsh | Journal of Democracy | July 2018
Analyzes political change in Malaysia while considering how religious conservatism and ethnic preferences affect democratic competition.
Malaysia: Religious Freedom in a Changing Political Order
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Provides current reporting on state Islamic institutions, conversion disputes, religious courts, minority rights, and restrictions on non-Sunni religious practice.
Pakistan and Bangladesh
A Conspiracy to Grab the Land: Exploiting Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws for Blackmail and Profit
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | June 9, 2025
Documents how Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are used for extortion, property seizures, personal vendettas, religious discrimination, and mob violence.
Pakistan: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews military influence, weak civilian government, religious discrimination, blasphemy prosecutions, and restrictions on secular and minority voices.
Pakistan: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Summarizes laws and practices affecting Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus, Shia Muslims, atheists, reformers, and people accused of blasphemy.
Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws and the Role of Religious Parties
| United States Institute of Peace | USIP | December 2020
Examines how religious parties and street movements use blasphemy controversies to influence governments and limit reform.
Pakistan’s Institutions and the Politics of Religious Extremism
| Aqil Shah | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | October 2018
Explores how military strategy, weak civilian institutions, and state alliances with religious groups have restricted democratic and secular development.
Pakistan’s Dangerous Ambiguity on Religious Extremism
| International Crisis Group | International Crisis Group | 2016
Argues that inconsistent state policies toward militant and nonviolent Islamist organizations undermine security, political pluralism, and minority rights.
The Islamization of Pakistan, 1979–2009
| Middle East Institute | Middle East Institute | 2009
Traces how military ruler Zia-ul-Haq expanded sharia-based laws, religious courts, educational Islamization, and discriminatory legislation.
Bangladesh: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews authoritarian politics, Islamist mobilization, attacks on minorities, and the declining credibility of official commitments to secular democracy.
Thousands of Islamists Rally in Bangladesh Against Proposed Changes to Women’s Rights
| Julhas Alam | Associated Press | May 3, 2025
Reports on Islamist opposition to proposals for equal property and inheritance rights, illustrating conflict between secular equality and religious family law.
Bangladesh’s Secular Tradition Under Pressure
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | October 21, 2021
Describes attacks on Hindu communities and questions the government’s ability or willingness to protect religious pluralism.
Bangladesh: The Government Should Defend Secular Bloggers
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | August 11, 2015
Calls for protection of writers and activists targeted by militants for criticizing religious fundamentalism or promoting secular thought.
Fatal Speech
| Nikhil Kumar | Time | October 19, 2015
Examines the murders of Bangladeshi secular and atheist bloggers and the government’s hesitant response to violent religious extremism.
Breach of Faith: Persecution of the Ahmadiyya Community of Bangladesh
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | June 15, 2005
Documents violence, intimidation, publication bans, and political campaigns directed against Bangladesh’s Ahmadi Muslim minority.
Bangladesh’s Constitution and the Meaning of Secularism
| The Daily Star | The Daily Star | December 2021
Reviews the constitutional history of secularism in Bangladesh, including its removal, partial restoration, and coexistence with Islam as the state religion.
The Paradox of Bangladesh’s Secular State Religion
| The Diplomat | The Diplomat | April 2016
Explains the contradiction between Bangladesh’s constitutional commitment to secularism and its simultaneous designation of Islam as the state religion.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf Monarchies
Iran: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews Iran’s theocratic institutions, unelected clerical bodies, restrictions on dissent, and discrimination against women and religious minorities.
Iran: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Documents persecution of Baha’is, Christians, Sunni Muslims, dissident Shia clerics, converts, atheists, and critics of compulsory religious rules.
Iran’s Women on the Front Lines
| Ladan Boroumand | Journal of Democracy | 2023
Examines women’s resistance to compulsory veiling and the broader challenge that personal autonomy presents to Iran’s religious state.
Woman, Life, Freedom: Iran’s Continuing Protest Movement
| Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Carnegie Endowment | September 2023
Analyzes a protest movement challenging compulsory religion, patriarchal law, clerical rule, and the state’s control over private life.
Iran’s Political System
| United States Institute of Peace | The Iran Primer | 2021
Explains the competing elected and unelected institutions through which clerical authorities supervise Iran’s republican structures.
Iran and Islam
| United States Institute of Peace | The Iran Primer | October 5, 2010
Surveys the historical development of Shiism in Iran and the political institutions created after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Saudi Arabia: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews absolute monarchy, restrictions on political organization, religious discrimination, and reforms that have modified but not ended authoritarian religious governance.
Saudi Arabia: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Details legal and social restrictions affecting Shia Muslims, non-Muslims, atheists, reformers, and people accused of blasphemy or apostasy.
Saudi Arabia’s Religious Reforms Are Touching Nothing but Changing Everything
| Yasmine Farouk and Nathan J. Brown | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | June 2021
Explains how the monarchy has reduced clerical autonomy and religious-police power without embracing political liberalism or full separation of religion and state.
The Transformation of Saudi Arabia’s Religious Establishment
| David B. Roberts | Brookings Institution | 2018
Examines the monarchy’s efforts to centralize religious authority and redefine the political role of conservative clerics.
United Arab Emirates: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Describes a state that promotes religious tolerance internationally while tightly restricting political participation, dissent, and independent religious organization.
Qatar: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews monarchical government, Islamic family law, restricted political rights, migrant-worker conditions, and limited freedom of expression.
Bahrain: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Examines authoritarian monarchy, Sunni-Shia discrimination, restrictions on opposition, and the political use of sectarian religious identity.
Kuwait: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews Kuwait’s comparatively active parliament alongside monarchical authority, religiously based personal-status law, and restrictions on speech.
Oman: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Describes Oman’s religiously distinctive but politically authoritarian system, where tolerance among recognized communities exists without democratic competition.
Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans
Kazakhstan: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews an officially secular state that tightly regulates Muslim institutions, religious registration, political opposition, and civil society.
Uzbekistan: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Examines a secular authoritarian government that controls Islamic education and worship while repressing both peaceful dissent and suspected religious extremism.
Tajikistan: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Documents state restrictions on Islamic dress, religious education, opposition parties, and independent religious activity in the name of secularism and security.
Turkmenistan: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Describes an intensely authoritarian secular state that subjects religious communities to surveillance, registration requirements, and government control.
Kyrgyzstan: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews democratic decline and increasing state regulation of religious organizations in one of Central Asia’s more politically pluralistic societies.
Azerbaijan: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Examines a formally secular, predominantly Muslim state where the government controls religious institutions and severely restricts political opposition.
Secularism and State Control of Islam in Central Asia
| Martha Brill Olcott | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | January 2017
Explores how post-Soviet governments use secularism to justify extensive control over mosques, clerics, religious education, and Islamic political activity.
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews a formally secular democracy whose institutions remain deeply divided among Bosniak Muslim, Serb Orthodox, and Croat Catholic political communities.
Kosovo: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Examines a Muslim-majority secular republic confronting ethnic divisions, minority protections, political instability, and disputes over national identity.
Albania: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews a Muslim-majority but religiously diverse secular republic where interfaith coexistence is strong despite corruption and institutional weaknesses.
Africa and the Sahel
Senegal: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews Senegal’s secular constitutional system and the influential but generally non-theocratic role of Sufi Muslim brotherhoods in politics and society.
Nigeria: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Examines the interaction of federal secular institutions, sharia criminal codes in northern states, sectarian conflict, and religious discrimination.
A Nigerian Prisoner of Conscience Is Free, but Others Remain in Danger
| Freedom House | Freedom House | July 31, 2025
Discusses the imprisonment of humanist Mubarak Bala and the continuing danger faced by Nigerians accused of blasphemy, apostasy, or religious dissent.
NGOs Call on Nigeria to Free Mubarak Bala
| Freedom House and Partner Organizations | Freedom House | July 24, 2024
Reports a United Nations finding that the detention of a Nigerian secular humanist violated freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and expression.
Mali: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews the collapse of democratic government, military rule, jihadist violence, and pressures on Mali’s secular constitutional tradition.
Burkina Faso: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Examines military government and Islamist insurgency in a religiously diverse Muslim-majority country with a formally secular state.
Niger: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews military rule, insecurity, religious conservatism, and the weakening of Niger’s secular democratic institutions.
The Gambia: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Examines democratic recovery in a Muslim-majority republic that briefly declared itself an Islamic state under former president Yahya Jammeh.
Sierra Leone: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Reviews a Muslim-majority democracy noted for relatively peaceful Muslim-Christian coexistence despite political and institutional weaknesses.
Sudan: Freedom in the World 2025
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2025
Describes war and state collapse following a transition that had attempted to reduce the role of Islamist law and dismantle the former religious dictatorship.
Constitutionalism, Rights, and Political Islam
The Empty Quest for Muslim Democracy
| Steven M. Fish and Graeme Blair | Journal of Democracy | 2024
Argues that democratic outcomes in Muslim-majority countries depend more on institutions, civil society, international conditions, and authoritarian legacies than on theology alone.
Rethinking Political Islam
| Shadi Hamid and William McCants | Brookings Institution | August 2015
Introduces comparative research on Islamist movements in twelve countries and their responses to elections, repression, governance, and ideological change.
Islamism, Salafism, and Jihadism: A Primer
| Shadi Hamid and Rashid Dar | Brookings Institution | July 15, 2016
Distinguishes electoral Islamism, Salafi religious conservatism, and violent jihadism while explaining their differing relationships to secular government.
Islamist Parties and Democracy: Institutions Make the Difference
| Laith Kubba | Journal of Democracy | July 2008
Argues that authoritarian institutions, military rule, monarchy, and weak civil society may pose greater obstacles to democracy than Islamist participation alone.
Islamist Parties and Democracy: Participation Without Power
| Ellen Lust-Okar | Journal of Democracy | July 2008
Uses Morocco to show how monarchies may permit Islamist electoral participation while preventing parties from exercising meaningful governmental power.
Islamist Parties and Democracy: Going Back to the Origins
| Hillel Fradkin | Journal of Democracy | July 2008
Investigates the ideological origins of Islamist parties and questions whether electoral moderation necessarily changes their long-term political objectives.
Islamist Parties and Democracy: Why They Can’t Be Democratic
| Bassam Tibi | Journal of Democracy | July 2008
Presents a critical argument that Islamism’s goal of establishing a religious political order conflicts with pluralist constitutional democracy.
Do Muslims Vote Islamic?
| Charles Kurzman and Ijlal Naqvi | Journal of Democracy | January 2010
Uses electoral and survey evidence to challenge assumptions that Muslim voters automatically support Islamist parties or reject democratic ideals.
Pluralism Is Necessary for Democracy
| Marwan Muasher | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | February 20, 2014
Argues that democratic development in Muslim-majority societies requires ideological diversity, minority rights, power sharing, and acceptance of political disagreement.
A Movement for Pluralism in the Arab World
| Marwan Muasher | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | January 23, 2014
Rejects the claim that Islam prevents democratic pluralism and draws lessons from Tunisia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey.
The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism
| Ladan and Roya Boroumand | Journal of Democracy | October 2002
Presents a skeptical response to arguments that authoritarianism in Muslim-majority countries can be explained without considering influential religious doctrines.
Islamism and the Failure of America’s Do-Nothing Policy
| Shadi Hamid | Brookings Institution | October 14, 2015
Examines how Western support for authoritarian allies affected the development of Islamist parties, secular opposition, and democratic credibility.
The Roots of the Islamic State’s Appeal
| Shadi Hamid | Brookings Institution | October 31, 2014
Connects modern jihadist appeals to unresolved debates over the caliphate, religious law, political legitimacy, and the post-Ottoman nation-state.
The Future of Political Islam
| Frederic Wehrey | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | January 2018
Surveys ideological fragmentation among Islamist movements and the effects of repression, electoral participation, generational change, and regional conflict.
Political Islam and Democracy in the Muslim World
| Council on Foreign Relations | Council on Foreign Relations | 2021
Provides an overview of Islamist parties and movements, their varying political goals, and their relationships with democratic and authoritarian institutions.
Secularism, Religious Authority, and the State
Official Islam in the Arab World: The Contest for Religious Authority
| Nathan J. Brown | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | May 11, 2017
Examines how Arab governments administer mosques, appoint clerics, regulate religious education, issue official interpretations of Islam, and use religious institutions to strengthen political authority.
Islam, State and Politics: Separate but Interactive
| Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im | Brookings Institution | 2007
Argues that a secular state can protect the freedom of Muslims to practice and interpret Islam while preventing government officials from imposing religious doctrine through coercive state power.
Muslim Politics Without an “Islamic” State
| Ahmet T. Kuru | Brookings Institution | February 2013
Compares constitutional arrangements in Muslim-majority societies and argues that democratic Muslim politics does not require the construction of a formally Islamic state.
Islam and the Secular State
| Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im | Harvard University Press | 2008
Presents a sustained argument that sharia should guide voluntary religious life rather than be enforced as state law, because religious commitment requires freedom of conscience.
Secularism and Religion-Making
| Markus Dressler and Arvind-Pal S. Mandair | Oxford University Press | 2011
Examines how modern states define, classify, and regulate religion, including the transformation of Islamic traditions under colonial and postcolonial secular institutions.
Formations of the Secular
| Talal Asad | Stanford University Press | 2003
Challenges the assumption that secularism simply removes religion from politics and explores how modern states actively construct categories of religion, citizenship, and acceptable public behavior.
Why I Am a Secular Muslim
| Mustafa Akyol | Cato Institute | December 15, 2020
Defends secular government as a framework that allows Muslims and non-Muslims to live according to conscience without turning religious disagreements into state coercion.
The Case for Muslim Secularism
| Mustafa Akyol | The New York Times | January 13, 2015
Argues that separating religious authority from government can protect Islam from political manipulation while safeguarding individual freedom and pluralism.
Religion and the Secular State in Central Asia
| Martha Brill Olcott | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | January 2017
Explores how Central Asian governments use secularism to justify extensive surveillance and regulation of mosques, religious education, clothing, and Islamic political activity.
Secularism, Sovereignty, and the State
| Middle East Institute | Middle East Institute | 2020
Discusses how colonial borders, nationalism, authoritarian government, and religious institutions shaped distinctive forms of secularism across the modern Middle East.
Religion, Democracy, and the “Twin Tolerations”
| Alfred Stepan | Journal of Democracy | October 2000
Proposes that democracy requires religious institutions and elected governments to tolerate one another’s legitimate spheres rather than demanding the complete exclusion of religion from public life.
Secularism in Comparative Perspective
| Ahmet T. Kuru | Democratization | 2011
Distinguishes between passive secularism, which permits public religious expression, and assertive secularism, which attempts to exclude religion from public institutions.
Passive and Assertive Secularism
| Ahmet T. Kuru | Cambridge University Press | 2009
Compares state policies toward religion and explains why Turkey’s assertive secularism differed from more accommodationist constitutional systems.
The Secular State and Religious Society
| Ira M. Lapidus | Social Science History | 2009
Reviews the historical separation and interaction of political and religious authority in Muslim societies, challenging the idea that Islam has always fused religion and state.
Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia
| Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im | Harvard University Press | 2008
Explains why constitutionalism, citizenship, human rights, and religious freedom require distinguishing voluntary Islamic ethics from enforceable state legislation.
Constitutional Secularism and Religious Freedom
Global Restrictions on Religion Reached Peak Levels in 2021
| Samirah Majumdar and Virginia Villa | Pew Research Center | March 5, 2024
Compares government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion, including legal controls imposed by both secular authoritarian states and officially Islamic governments.
Government Restrictions on Religion Around the World
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | November 29, 2022
Examines government regulation of worship and religious gatherings while illustrating the broader tension between legitimate public regulation and discriminatory interference.
In 22 Countries, an Official State Religion
| Michael Lipka | Pew Research Center | October 3, 2017
Summarizes international patterns of established religion, preferred religion, religious neutrality, and government hostility toward religious institutions.
Freedom of Thought Report
| Humanists International | Humanists International | 2025
Evaluates laws and social conditions affecting atheists, humanists, secularists, religious dissenters, and converts in countries throughout the Muslim-majority world.
Blasphemy Laws Remain Widespread
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2023
Catalogs national blasphemy laws and explains how governments use them to restrict religious debate, minority beliefs, secular expression, and criticism of official religious institutions.
Respecting Rights? Measuring the World’s Blasphemy Laws
| Joelle Fiss and Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum | USCIRF | July 2020
Compares the severity of blasphemy laws, including punishments, discriminatory enforcement, restrictions on expression, and the degree to which legislation protects a dominant religion.
Apostasy, Blasphemy, and Hate Speech Laws in Africa
| USCIRF | United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | December 2019
Reviews African laws that punish religious dissent or expression, including provisions maintained by several Muslim-majority governments.
Constitutional and Legal Challenges Faced by Religious Minorities
| USCIRF | United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | 2021
Examines constitutional provisions that privilege majority religions and weaken equal citizenship for religious minorities and nonbelievers.
The Relationship Between Religion and the State
| International IDEA | International IDEA | 2014
Provides constitutional-design guidance on established religions, secular government, religious courts, political parties, equality, and freedom of conscience.
Constitution-Building and Religious Freedom
| Dawood Ahmed and Tom Ginsburg | International IDEA | 2014
Compares constitutional approaches to religion and identifies mechanisms for balancing majority traditions with individual rights and minority protections.
Freedom of Religion or Belief and Women’s Rights
| United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights | OHCHR | 2020
Explains that religious freedom cannot be invoked to justify discrimination against women and that secular and religious legal systems must comply with universal human rights.
Freedom of Religion or Belief and Gender Equality
| Ahmed Shaheed | United Nations General Assembly | October 12, 2020
Examines conflicts involving religious doctrine, family law, bodily autonomy, gender equality, and the responsibilities of governments to protect individual conscience.
Minority Rights in Muslim-Majority States
| Minority Rights Group International | Minority Rights Group International | 2018
Reviews discrimination affecting religious and ethnic minorities and evaluates whether constitutional promises of equality are supported by effective institutions.
Restrictions on Religious Conversion
| Law Library of Congress | Library of Congress | 2017
Surveys laws regulating conversion, apostasy, religious registration, and changes of religious identity in jurisdictions including numerous Muslim-majority countries.
Anti-Conversion Laws and Religious Freedom
| USCIRF | United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | 2023
Explains how restrictions presented as protections against forced conversion can be used to prevent voluntary religious change and police personal identity.
Morocco, Algeria, and the Maghreb
Morocco: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Reviews Morocco’s official Maliki Sunni establishment, the king’s title as Commander of the Faithful, restrictions on conversion, and limited space for religious dissent.
Morocco: Freedom in the World 2024
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2024
Examines monarchical authority, restricted political competition, official Islam, minority religious practice, and constraints on independent secular activism.
Morocco’s Islamist Party: Redefining Politics Under Pressure
| Intissar Fakir | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | September 2021
Studies the Justice and Development Party’s experience in government and the limits imposed by a monarchy that controls both political and religious authority.
Morocco’s PJD Between Inclusion and Marginalization
| Avi Spiegel | Brookings Institution | 2015
Examines how controlled electoral inclusion encouraged Islamist participation without fundamentally reducing the Moroccan monarchy’s dominance.
Morocco’s Family Code Reform
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | March 28, 2024
Calls for reform of religiously influenced family laws governing marriage, divorce, child custody, guardianship, and inheritance.
Morocco: Unequal Inheritance Rules
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | September 8, 2023
Describes campaigns challenging inheritance rules that grant women smaller shares than similarly situated male relatives.
Morocco’s Truth Commission
| International Center for Transitional Justice | ICTJ | 2009
Reviews Morocco’s attempt to address authoritarian abuses committed under a monarchy that combines temporal power with official religious legitimacy.
Algeria: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Documents restrictions on Protestant churches, Ahmadis, atheists, converts, religious publications, and communities lacking government registration.
Algeria: Freedom in the World 2024
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2024
Reviews military-backed authoritarianism, official Islam, restrictions on religious minorities, and repression of both secular and Islamist opposition groups.
Algeria Shutters Protestant Churches
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | October 22, 2019
Documents the closure of churches under regulations requiring non-Muslim associations and places of worship to obtain government authorization.
Algeria’s Hirak: A Political Opportunity
| Dalia Ghanem | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | July 2020
Examines a broad civic protest movement that brought together secular, religious, regional, and ideological constituencies against entrenched authoritarian rule.
Islamism, Secularism, and Algeria’s Civil War
| International Crisis Group | International Crisis Group | 2004
Studies the political exclusion, military intervention, Islamist insurgency, and state violence that followed Algeria’s interrupted electoral transition.
Political Islam in Algeria
| Amel Boubekeur | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | April 2008
Explores divisions among Algerian Islamist parties, their adaptation to controlled elections, and their relationships with the military-backed state.
Mauritania: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Reviews apostasy and blasphemy provisions, restrictions on non-Islamic worship, hereditary social hierarchies, and discrimination against religious dissenters.
Mauritania: Freedom in the World 2024
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2024
Examines military influence, official Islam, slavery-related discrimination, restrictions on expression, and limited political pluralism.
Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine
Jordan: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Reviews Jordan’s state recognition of religious communities, restrictions on conversion from Islam, religious family courts, and limits on minority beliefs.
Jordan: Freedom in the World 2024
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2024
Examines royal authority, constrained elections, official Islam, restrictions on speech, and the controlled participation of Islamist and secular parties.
Jordan’s Islamists and the State
| Nathan J. Brown | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | August 2016
Analyzes the monarchy’s long relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and the effects of electoral rules, repression, and ideological fragmentation.
Jordan’s New Political Reform Agenda
| Bruce Riedel | Brookings Institution | 2022
Examines efforts to modernize party politics while maintaining monarchical control and balancing tribal, secular, and religious constituencies.
Jordan’s Personal Status Law
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | April 7, 2010
Reviews discrimination against women in marriage, divorce, guardianship, nationality, and inheritance under Jordanian law.
Lebanon: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Examines Lebanon’s confessional political structure, recognized religious courts, minority communities, and the absence of a universally available civil marriage system.
Lebanon: Freedom in the World 2024
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2024
Reviews a political system that allocates public offices by religious identity and has struggled to create accountable, secular, and nationally representative institutions.
Lebanon’s Sectarian Political System
| Kali Robinson | Council on Foreign Relations | October 26, 2022
Explains how political offices, legislative seats, family law, and public resources are distributed through Lebanon’s institutionalized religious communities.
Why Lebanon Has No Civil Marriage
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | January 19, 2015
Examines religious personal-status systems that produce unequal rights in marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance.
Unequal and Unprotected: Women’s Rights Under Lebanese Personal Status Laws
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | January 19, 2015
Compares fifteen religious personal-status systems and documents how fragmented religious jurisdiction frequently disadvantages women and children.
Iraq: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Reviews the treatment of Christians, Yazidis, Kaka’is, Sabean Mandaeans, Sunni and Shia communities, converts, and people with nonreligious identities.
Iraq’s Risks of Deepening Sectarianism
| Harith Hasan | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | August 28, 2024
Examines efforts to expand sectarian religious authority over personal-status law and the resulting threats to citizenship, national institutions, and women’s rights.
Iraq: Personal Status Law Amendments Threaten Rights
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | August 19, 2024
Warns that proposed legislation could transfer family-law authority to religious bodies and expose girls to child marriage and reduced legal protection.
Iraq’s Constitution and Islamic Law
| Jonathan Morrow | United States Institute of Peace | October 2005
Analyzes constitutional clauses declaring Islam the official religion while also requiring democracy, rights, federalism, and legal equality.
Palestine: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Reviews religious-freedom concerns under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, including restrictions involving conversion, blasphemy, political dissent, and minority communities.
Afghanistan and the Taliban
Afghanistan: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Documents the Taliban’s enforcement of its interpretation of Sunni Islam and the persecution of women, Shia Hazaras, Sufis, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, and nonbelievers.
Religious Freedom in Afghanistan Three Years After the Taliban Takeover
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | March 20, 2025
Describes the disappearance of meaningful freedom of religion or belief under Taliban rule, including severe threats against converts, atheists, and minority faiths.
Afghanistan: Freedom in the World 2024
| Freedom House | Freedom House | 2024
Reviews the Taliban’s theocratic government, exclusion of women from public life, elimination of political competition, and punishment of religious dissent.
Taliban and the Global Backlash Against Women’s Rights
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | September 11, 2023
Examines the broader social and educational consequences of Taliban policies that organize public life around rigid gender segregation.
Death in Slow Motion: Women and Girls Under Taliban Rule
| Amnesty International | Amnesty International | July 27, 2022
Documents restrictions on education, employment, movement, clothing, protest, health care, and access to justice under Taliban religious governance.
Afghanistan’s Taliban: A Religious State Without a Constitution
| United States Institute of Peace | USIP | August 2022
Examines how Taliban leaders govern through decrees, clerical authority, religious courts, and security institutions rather than an accountable constitutional system.
The Taliban’s Religious Police
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | October 29, 2021
Describes the reestablishment of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and its enforcement of behavioral and dress regulations.
Afghanistan’s Shia Hazaras Under Threat
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | September 3, 2021
Documents forced displacement and discrimination affecting a religious and ethnic minority under Taliban rule.
Afghanistan’s Constitution Between Islam and Democracy
| Barnett R. Rubin | United States Institute of Peace | January 2004
Examines attempts after 2001 to combine an Islamic republic, democratic elections, individual rights, representative institutions, and legal pluralism.
The Taliban’s War on Women
| David J. Scheffer | Council on Foreign Relations | April 2023
Argues that systematic exclusion of women from education, employment, and public life is fundamental to the Taliban’s model of religious government.
Indonesia: Pancasila, Blasphemy, and Pluralism
Indonesia to Expand Abusive Blasphemy Law
| Andreas Harsono | Human Rights Watch | October 31, 2019
Warns that revisions to Indonesia’s criminal code would broaden restrictions on religious expression and increase the vulnerability of minorities and nonbelievers.
Indonesia’s New Criminal Code
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | December 8, 2022
Reviews provisions affecting blasphemy, private morality, sexuality, political speech, and other areas where criminal law enforces majoritarian values.
Indonesia: Court Upholds Blasphemy Law
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | April 19, 2010
Criticizes a Constitutional Court ruling that retained a law frequently used against minority Islamic communities and unconventional religious movements.
In Religion’s Name
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | February 28, 2013
Documents violence, intimidation, church closures, discriminatory regulations, and inadequate government protection for religious minorities.
Indonesia: Religious Minorities Targets of Rising Violence
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | February 28, 2013
Shows how local officials, militant organizations, and discriminatory national policies undermined Indonesia’s commitment to pluralism.
Indonesia’s Mandatory Religious Attire Rules
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | March 18, 2021
Documents regulations pressuring women and girls to wear Islamic clothing in schools and public institutions, including members of religious minorities.
Indonesia’s Pancasila and Political Islam
| ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute | ISEAS Perspective | 2020
Examines disputes over whether Pancasila requires a religiously pluralist state or permits greater institutionalization of Islamic law.
The Politics of Sharia Law in Indonesia
| International Crisis Group | International Crisis Group | 2006
Studies Aceh’s local implementation of Islamic criminal and morality regulations and its implications for national law and human rights.
Indonesia’s Anti-Pornography Law
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | October 30, 2008
Explains how morality legislation can disproportionately affect women, artists, Indigenous traditions, religious minorities, and regional cultures.
Indonesia’s Ahmadiyya Community
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | February 7, 2011
Documents lethal violence against Ahmadis and calls for repeal of regulations restricting their religious practice.
Malaysia and Brunei
Malaysia: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Examines the constitutional privilege granted to Islam, restrictions on conversion, dual civil and sharia courts, and discrimination against minority Muslim movements.
Malaysia’s Restrictions on the Word “Allah”
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | June 23, 2014
Criticizes restrictions preventing some Christian publications from using a word historically shared by Malay-speaking religious communities.
Malaysia: End Moral Policing
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | August 10, 2022
Examines how religious departments and morality laws regulate private conduct and reinforce discrimination through state-backed interpretations of Islam.
Malaysia’s Dual Legal System
| Library of Congress | Global Legal Monitor | October 23, 2018
Reviews disputes over the jurisdiction of civil and sharia courts, particularly in cases involving conversion, marriage, custody, and burial.
Malaysia’s Islamic Bureaucracy
| ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute | ISEAS Perspective | 2020
Explores how federal and state religious departments regulate doctrine, sermons, education, conversion, morality, and recognized Islamic identity.
Malaysia’s Politics of Race and Religion
| International Crisis Group | International Crisis Group | 2020
Examines how Malay ethnic privilege and institutional Islam interact with party competition, reform movements, and democratic polarization.
Brunei: Religious Freedom Conditions
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2025
Reviews Brunei’s sharia penal code, restrictions on non-Muslim worship, limits on religious teaching, and the sultan’s fusion of political and religious authority.
Brunei’s New Penal Code Imposes Cruel Punishments
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | April 3, 2019
Criticizes punishments prescribed under Brunei’s sharia penal code, including penalties targeting consensual relationships, pregnancy outside marriage, adultery, and religious offenses.
Brunei: Abusive Laws Take Effect
| Amnesty International | Amnesty International | April 3, 2019
Calls for repeal of laws authorizing punishments that violate international prohibitions against torture and discrimination.
Brunei’s Melayu Islam Beraja Ideology
| ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute | ISEAS Perspective | 2018
Examines the official ideology combining Malay ethnic identity, Sunni Islam, and monarchical rule as the foundation of Brunei’s political system.
Secular Activists, Nonbelievers, and Freedom of Expression
The Persecution of Atheists and Humanists
| United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights | OHCHR | August 7, 2017
Emphasizes that freedom of religion or belief protects atheists, agnostics, humanists, dissenting believers, converts, and people who decline to identify with any religion.
The Right to Be Nonreligious
| United States Commission on International Religious Freedom | USCIRF | 2021
Explains that international religious-freedom protections include the right to reject religion, question doctrine, change beliefs, and express nonreligious views.
Crimes of Thought: The Case of Saudi Writer Hamza Kashgari
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | February 13, 2012
Describes the detention and deportation of a writer accused of blasphemy after posting comments about the Prophet Muhammad on social media.
Saudi Arabia: Blogger Raif Badawi Released
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | March 11, 2022
Reviews the imprisonment and corporal punishment of a blogger whose website promoted liberal debate about religion and public affairs.
Pakistan’s Secular Voices Under Threat
| Amnesty International | Amnesty International | January 10, 2017
Calls for investigations into the disappearances of bloggers and activists known for criticizing religious extremism and military power.
Bangladesh: No Justice for Murdered Secular Bloggers
| Amnesty International | Amnesty International | May 12, 2015
Documents the killing of secular writers and argues that government inaction encouraged further attacks on freedom of expression.
Jordan: Writer Killed Over Cartoon
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | September 26, 2016
Describes the murder of writer Nahed Hattar while he faced prosecution for sharing a cartoon deemed insulting to religion.
Mauritania: Blogger Faces Death Sentence
| Amnesty International | Amnesty International | November 9, 2017
Examines the prosecution of Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir for an article criticizing the use of religion to justify social discrimination.
Indonesia: Atheist Imprisoned for Facebook Post
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | June 14, 2012
Criticizes the imprisonment of Alexander Aan after he identified as an atheist and posted comments questioning religion.
Egypt: Atheists Face State Harassment
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | January 13, 2015
Examines official campaigns against atheism and the use of blasphemy and morality provisions to suppress nonreligious expression.
