The Arab World Has Become Less Religious Over the Past Five Years

The Arab world is becoming less religious, according to a new survey for BBC News Arabic.

Over the past five years, most of the nations have seen a rise of the “Nones,” especially Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Morocco, each of which doubled their non-religious numbers.

To be fair, some of these nations couldn’t exactly get much lower. When a country is only 5% non-religious, there’s really nowhere to go but up. But it’s still a positive trend in a part of the world often linked to religious extremism.

That extremism hasn’t gone away. The same survey finds that “honor killings” are considered more acceptable than homosexuality in many of the countries surveyed. It’s appalling enough for anyone to say it’s acceptable to kill relatives (usually women) for bringing dishonor upon a family. Yet many people believe being openly gay is somehow even worse.

People in those countries can’t ditch religion fast enough.