Map: The Freedom of Countries

This map shows the freedom in the world – the freedom ratings by country in 2011. There is a large cluster of countries in the Middle East / North Africa, Russia / Central Asia, China and Indo-China where the countries are rated “not free”. Note that these are ratings by Freedom House on political rights and civil liberties for the year 2011, which take into account the events of the Arab Spring.

Data Source: Freedom House; Generated with this

If you compare this with the Christian map and the Muslim map, you can see that many of the majority-Christian nations are rated “free”, while many of the Muslim (the Middle East / North Africa) countries are rated “not free”. It may be a coincidence – or due to the lack of freedom in these countries, the population does not profess any other religion other than the official one. Of course, ratings (as well as professions of religion) have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

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Data Source: Freedom House; Map: Generated by me

Map: Christian Population in the World

This map shows the number of Christians as a percentage of the total population in each country. As you can see, the countries with large percentage of Christians are in Europe, North America, South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Again, the map shows the number of Christians as a percentage of the total population in each country, not the number of Christians in each country.

Data Source: Pew Research Center; Generated with this

There is a large swath of countries in the Middle East / North Africa, South Asia, North Asia and Southeast Asia, where the percentage of Christians is low. The populations of these countries are mainly from other religions, such as Islam (Middle East / North Africa, Indonesia), Hinduism (India) or Buddhism (Japan, maybe China). The contrast with the countries with high percentage of Muslims can be seen if you refer to the Muslim map of the world.

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Data Source: Pew Research Center; Map: Generated by me

Map: Muslim Population in the World

This map shows the number of Muslims as a percentage of the total population in each country. As you can see, there is a large concentration of countries in the Middle East / North Africa / Central Asia belt where the country percentage of Muslims is highest (usually more than 95%). The other large cluster is in the Southeast Asia region, including Indonesia and Malaysia.

Data Source: Pew Research Center; Generated with this

The map shows the number of Muslims as a percentage of the total population in each country, not the number of Muslims in each country. For example, there is a large population of Muslims in China, but this is small compared to the total population in China. See also the Christian map and the Freedom map.

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Data Source: Pew Research Center; Map: Generated by me

Map: Crime Statistics - Homicide Rates

This map shows the homicide rates in the world, by country. The data is from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, where intentional homicide is defined as “unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person”. It should be the technical term for what we know as murder.

Data Source: UN Office on Drugs and Crime

From the map, we can see that the countries with the highest homicide rates are those from Africa (except the Northern parts) and some countries of Latin America (Brazil, Mexico). The countries with the lowest homicide rates are Canada, most parts of Europe, North Africa (surprisingly), Australia, New Zealand, China (perhaps because of the large population and stringent laws) and Japan. Of course, there are many small countries that we cannot see on the map that may have much worse or better homicide rates.

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Data Source: UNODC; Map: Generated by me