Nearly half (47%) of the countries and territories in the world have laws or policies that penalize blasphemy, apostasy (abandoning one’s faith) or defamation.   Of 198 countries studied by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, 104 have no such laws while 94 have at least some of them. Anti-blasphemy laws exist in 32 countries (16% of those studied), laws penalizing apos…