@newspaperarticle {66376,
	title = {Iraq: One Nation Under Allah: Why it{\textquoteright}s unrealistic to expect a separation of mosque and state},
	year = {2005},
	note = {Robert J. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution.},
	month = {May 9, 2005},
	publisher = {Business Week},
	abstract = {
The insurgency in Iraq goes on, but attention has shifted toward the
structure of an independent government. One key issue is whether the
new regime will have a state religion, as envisioned by the
U.S.-imposed transitional administrative law. Research by Rachel M.
McCleary and me at Harvard University{\textquoteright}s Project on Religion, Political
Economy \& Society suggests that the Iraqi government will have an
official religion. Although separation of religion and state has long
been a Western ideal, it seems politically unrealistic for Iraq.
The consequences of state religion are complicated in practice. We
find that the presence of state religion encourages participation in
formal religious services (likely because of governmental subsidies to
organized religion) and provides a smaller boost to religious beliefs.
There is a weak negative impact on economic growth. And although some
rich countries such as Britain and most of Scandinavia maintain
religious liberties despite having official religions, state religions
tend to coincide with curbs on religious freedoms.
In our research, we used international data to isolate the
demographic, social, and economic factors that lead to the
establishment of a state religion. Most important is whether a country
has a diversity of religions or is concentrated in a single faith. For
example, in 2000, the largest U.S. group was Protestants, with 44\%,
whereas in Morocco it was Sunni Muslims, with 98\%. We estimate that
this difference made the probability of a state religion in Morocco
(which had one) higher by 69 percentage points than in the U.S. (which
did not).
LESS CLEAR IS WHETHER the identity of a country{\textquoteright}s main religion
influences the likelihood of state religion. In 2000, among the 40
countries where more than 50\% of the people were Muslim, 28 (or 70\%)
had a state religion. In contrast, among the 91 countries with more
than 50\% in a single non-Muslim religion, 42 (or only 46\%) had a state
religion. We found that half of the Muslim/non-Muslim difference arose
because the share of population that adhered to the most popular
religion was higher in Muslim countries. The rest of the difference
involves a greater tendency by government to curb religious freedoms
in Muslim countries.
Another important factor is that communist countries rarely have a
state religion (if communism does not count as a religion). However,
this influence lacks staying power: Since 1990, 15 ex-communist
countries, including six Muslim ones, set up state religions. 
The size of a country matters; neither very small nor very large
countries tend to have state religions. For small nations, the cost of
maintaining an official religious administration is simply too great.
For large countries, even a small proportion of the population in
minority religions constitutes a large number of people and,
therefore, creates resistance to a monopoly religion supported by the
government. 
For Iraq, a big question is whether the stronger force toward state
religion is the 96\% of the population that is Muslim or the 61\% that
is Shiite Muslim. We analyzed this issue using estimated breakdowns of
Muslim populations into Sunni, Shiite, and other sects. Sunni is by
far the largest worldwide, and only Iran is mainly Shiite (86\% of the
people). Only a few Muslim countries have substantial representation
in more than one category: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman,
and Yemen. Some other Muslim countries -- Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Syria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates -- are 10\% to 20\% Shiite.
But our results suggest that overall Muslim share, not size of the
most popular sect, is what influences the creation of state religion.
No model predicts perfectly, but ours gets the right answer more than
80\% of the time. Thus, it is instructive that the model{\textquoteright}s probability
for a state religion in Iraq is 96\%. True, our method also gives
neighboring Turkey an 88\% probability for state religion, even though
it has been officially secular for decades. One can view this mistaken
prediction two ways. One is that, despite forces that favor state
religion, Turkey can be a model for Iraq on how to separate church and
state. The other is that Turkey{\textquoteright}s secular status represents
hard-to-duplicate political influence by its strong President, Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, in the 1920s and {\textquoteright}30s. Conceivably, the factors that
favor a state religion will eventually generate an Islamic state in
Turkey. That reversal seems more likely than Iraq{\textquoteright}s becoming a secular
state.},
	url = {http://www.businessweek.com/},
	author = {Robert J. Barro}
}
