Recently, there has been a surge of authoritarian government policies at the global level. From China to Myanmar, from India to Saudi Arabia, from Iraq to the United States, the primary targets of these policies are religious minorities. Hence, Jonathan Fox’s book analyzing the causes and consequences of discriminatory governmental policies against religious minorities is exactly what is needed at this time under these global conditions.

Using an exhaustive global dataset, Fox’s book analyzes government-based religious discrimination against 771 minorities in 183 countries between 1990 and 2014. The book conducts clustered comparisons by examining countries through certain categories based on religion, ideology, and region. Among these categories, on average, communist, Muslim-majority, Orthodox-majority, and Buddhist-majority countries have higher levels of government-based religious discrimination than non-Orthodox Christian-majority countries (pp. 172, 183, 190). In each category, however, there is wide variation. Muslim-majority cases, for example, include “both countries that are among the most tolerant of religious minorities as well as countries that are among the most intolerant” (pp. 8–9).

What explains the various levels of government-based religious discrimination across and within categories? According to Fox, the answer is complicated, because each of the key independent variables has certain limits for explaining these complex policy results. One variable is world regions. Among Muslim-majority countries, the tolerant cases are almost entirely in West Africa. A regional distinction is also visible between Western and non-Western Christians. This distinction is important to test the next variable: the political regime. Democracies have less government-based religious discrimination than authoritarian regimes among non-Christian and Orthodox Christian cases (p. 267). Yet, half of all countries in the analysis are non-Orthodox Christian-majority, and among these cases, democracy is not associated with more toleration. Christian-majority countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, regardless of whether they are democratic or authoritarian, have, on average, less government-based religious discrimination than Western democracies. This is the most surprising and noteworthy finding of the book.

Documenting examples in various Western countries, including Germany, Norway, and Switzerland, Fox indicates how these countries have imposed restrictions on Muslims’ and Jews’ religious practices, such as ritual animal slaughtering, burials, children’s circumcision, and teachers’ and students’ headscarves in public schools (pp. 1–4, 35). Why do Western democracies appear to be, on average, more intolerant than many nations in other regions? To answer that question, while analyzing Western countries, as well as the rest of the world, Fox explores additional variables concerning characteristics of the state and of the religious minority.

Regarding characteristics of the states, religious and secular ideologies are the pivotal variable. If the state embraces a religious ideology, in terms of having an established religion, then it is more likely to have government-based religious discrimination against religious minorities. This does not mean that all secular states are tolerant toward minorities. Fox stresses that certain types of secular states are very intolerant. He cites my (2009) Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey, which documents how “assertive secularist” French and Turkish states were intolerant toward religious minorities. Fox also points to communist states, which have embraced extreme versions of assertive secularism and yet pursued various discriminations against religious minorities.

With regard to the characteristics of the religious minority, the crucial variables are whether that minority is perceived as a cult/security concern or an alien element/existential threat. If the state’s security apparatus perceives a religious minority as a cult or a security concern, then that minority becomes likely to face governmental discrimination. Perceptions are also important for societal religious discrimination and its governmental consequences. According to Fox, societal religious discrimination is not directly associated with government-based religious discrimination unless there exist some triggers. The effective triggers are whether a religious minority is perceived as foreign or an existential threat. Such perceptions not only fuel societal discrimination against that minority but also make the societal discrimination a cause of governmental discrimination against it.

My main criticism of this important book is its writing style and general structure, which are highly specialized. For those who study religious freedom, the book provides important data and insightful analysis. Nonetheless, for nonexperts, it includes too much jargon, and the way it presents the data in overly detailed tables makes it difficult to engage with. Nonspecialists can use this book as an encyclopedic source, but using it for teaching purposes, especially to undergraduate students, would be challenging.

If the book’s writing style and structure were more accessible for a broader readership, then its theoretical implications would have a wider audience. This is important, because the book’s conclusions are relevant to political science in general, beyond the particular field of religion and politics. Political science, at least in the United States, has for decades been dominated by the rational-choice perspective, which overemphasizes the role of strategic behaviors while undermining the significance of ideologies. This book challenges that domination by documenting how religious and secular ideologies have shaped government policies. Another theoretical contribution of the book is its challenge to the emphasis on legal codes in the literature analyzing state policies toward religion. Fox reveals that, despite the existence of laws guaranteeing religious freedom in most countries’ legal systems, their governments’ discrimination against religious minorities is due to the impacts of authoritarian regimes, discriminatory ideologies, and negative perceptions.

In sum, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods before Me: Why Governments Discriminate against Religious Minorities is a must read for those who are interested in religious freedom worldwide. This important analysis is relevant to both theoretical debates in political science and the recent authoritarian tide in world politics.