A new survey is slated to reveal how adverse treatment of certain religious groups in several countries significantly worsened during the coronavirus pandemic. The SMART survey, conducted as part of the Religious Freedom Institute’s Freedom of Religious Institutions in Society (FORIS) Project, was designed to fulfill an “unmet need for policy-relevant data to identify, understand and address religious freedom restrictions on religious communities across the globe.”

Rebecca Shah, a senior fellow at the Archbridge Institute and principal investigator for the Religion and Economic Empowerment Project (REEP), elaborated on the results. “The SMART survey stands for Simple, Meaningful, Accessible, Relevant and Timely,” she said. While the survey initially received funding to question experts on the ground about the state of religious freedom in Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Iraq, the survey was later expanded to other countries, about 10 countries, including India, Egypt, Mexico, Turkey and Greece.

According to Shah, “policymakers … needed reliable reports that drew on the deep expertise of individuals who could analyze religious freedom violations on the ground in key global locations and provide policymakers with real-time and reliable data on strategic countries.” While “a lot of reports on religious freedom restrictions, both individuals and religious institutions,” existed prior to the SMART survey, Shah stressed the need for “information that comes from local experts on the ground in their own countries, rather than, say, somebody’s desk in Washington, D.C., or Geneva.” She contended that the findings of such a survey were “more likely to be owned by actors in the country and in the region.” The “local experts in these different countries” who participated “were asked to fill out the survey from the perspective of a minority religious community or a majority religious community” based on expertise or membership in a particular religion.

“We started the survey before the pandemic, but as soon as the pandemic hit, we were able to retool the questionnaire to some extent and resubmit the questions to the experts and ask them to fill out COVID-related questions. And so, a lot of the data we got was over the COVID-19 period … at the height of the Delta variant and others, where we were able to examine and explore the impact of restrictions on religious communities as the pandemic was ongoing,” Shah said.

The survey found “an increase in deliberate and direct attacks on houses of worship … and religious and charitable and other religious institutions across the globe.” Specifically, “In Nigeria … 85.7% of respondents writing about minority Christian communities in northern parts of Nigeria said they were aware of direct attacks of houses of worship in their country. In Iraq, 30% of respondents reporting about minority communities, which included Yazidis and Christians, said they were aware of attacks on houses of worship in their countries. Again, when asked who, in their view, were the perpetrators of these attacks, our data revealed that political actors, which might include local government officials, were responsible for 60% of high or very high levels of restrictions on religious institutions, which include houses of worship … religious and charitable institutions,” she added.

Respondents were asked if they knew of “any acts of discrimination perpetrated against individuals or communities on account of their religion or belief that may have been prompted by the current COVID-19 pandemic.” The results revealed “one out of three respondents from India said they were aware of such types of religiously motivated discrimination” during COVID. Additionally, “one out of five respondents in Indonesia said the same and 10% of Nigerian respondents also said they were aware of this type of … discrimination.” Thus, the global pandemic has allowed for nations to persecute believers to an even greater extent than before and is making persecution more accepting in many countries.

PRAY: Pray for the persecuted church that is dealing with increasing amounts of persecution through the global pandemic.