Atheists and religious skeptics can be executed in at least thirteen nations: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Relative to its own populations, Zuckerman ranks the top 5 countries with the highest possible ranges of agnostics and atheists: Sweden (46-85%), Vietnam (81%), Denmark (43-80%), Norway (31-72%), and Japan (64-65%).
Though atheists are in the minority in most countries, they are relatively common in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, East Asia and present communist states.
All citizens of the UAE are deemed to be Muslims. Conversion to other religions (and by implication, advocacy of atheism) is forbidden and the legal punishment for conversion from Islam is death, although there have been no known prosecutions or legal punishments for apostasy in court.
Despite the fact that atheism is not a religion, atheism is protected by many of the same Constitutional rights that protect religion.
Atheism is illegal and is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. While punishments for same sex relations are not codified under the law in Saudi Arabia, they are strictly prohibited under Shari'a (Islamic law) which Saudi Arabia draws from for it's legal framework.
According to NORC of Chicago, 20.6% of Australians don't believe in God and never have, while 9.7% are "strong atheists".
The Chinese government is wary of religion for several reasons. China is officially an atheist state and Communist Party members are banned from believing in or practicing any faith; there is concern that religion can function as an alternative to Communism and thus undermine loyalty to the government.
Religions that are not permitted to exist in China like the Falun Gong or Jehovah's witnesses are not protected by the constitution. Religious groups that are not registered by the government, like Catholics who are part of an underground church or Protestant house churches, are not protected by the constitution.
“There are growing numbers of atheists/agnostics in countries across the world,” said Dr Lanman. “Our recently completed 'Understanding Unbelief' programme looked beyond the stereotypes and helped to document some of the world's rich diversity in atheism and agnosticism.
There are no known official statistics of religions in North Korea. Officially, North Korea is an atheist state, although its constitution guarantees free exercise of religion, provided that religious practice does not introduce foreign forces, harm the state, or harm the existing social order.
The Soviet Union attempted to suppress public religious expression over wide areas of its influence, including places such as Central Asia. Either currently or in their past, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba are or were officially atheist.
The most godless country in the world, however, is China. According to the survey, fully 67% of respondents in China considered themselves 'convinced atheists' – more than double the percentage in the world's second-most atheistic country, Japan (29%).
The Buddhists have founded no Inquisition; they have combined the zeal which converted kingdoms with a toleration almost inexplicable to our Western experience. The Edicts of Ashoka issued by King Ashoka the Great (269–231 BCE), a Buddhist, declared ethnic and religious tolerance.
Among the groups suffering this type of repression are Islamic groups Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tablighi Jamaat, and followers of Muslim theologian Said Nursi. The Church of Scientology was closed on the grounds of posing a threat to national security. The Falun Gong spiritual movement was banned for extremism and terrorism.
Currently, among China's major religions, which include Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and folk beliefs, Christianity is the only one whose major holy text cannot be sold through normal commercial channels. The Bible is printed in China but legally available only at church bookstores approved by Beijing.
Although formally banned in 1612 and today critically portrayed as a foreign "religion of colonialism", Christianity has played a role in the shaping of the relationship between religion and the Japanese state for more than four centuries.
The 2021 Census shows that nearly 10 million Australians indicated they had no religion; the data also shows a reduction of over a million Christians since the 2016 Census. These statistics highlight an increasing rate of decline in Christianity and a trend that has continued since the 1960s.
While Langwarrin has the most people with no religion, hipster hotspot Byron Bay in northern NSW had a higher proportion of nonbelievers. More than 6511 said they did not follow a faith, compared with 2711 who said they are Christian.
The Egyptian Penal Code does not have any penalizing provisions against or criminalization of atheism. However, it includes the so-called the Article of Blasphemy (Article 98), which stipulates imprisonment between six months and five years.
Catholics and Orthodox Christians, who require a priest on a regular basis to receive the sacraments required by their faith, particularly are affected. Proselytizing by non-Muslims, including the distribution of non-Muslim religious materials such as Bibles, is illegal.
Background. In the World Values Survey conducted from 2010 to 2014, results show that in Yemen, Jordan, and Iraq, fewer than 0.5% of those surveyed self-defined themselves as atheists; meanwhile, the highest percentage of self-defined atheists within the Middle East was in Kuwait, at 0.8%.