This is the Cato Dilly Podcast for Tuesday, August 25th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What is the state of freedom in the Muslim world?

Based on data from Cato's Human Freedom Index,

Mustafa Akyol has been researching this question.

We discussed his new report this week.

The Cato Institute produces the Human Freedom Index,

and we're also the U.S. distributor of the Economic Freedom of the World Index,

and the Human Freedom Index uses some of that data as well.

You've gone a step further to create an index of freedom

for Muslim majority countries. Why do that?

Thanks, Caleb. Indeed, I'm now launching the Freedom in the Muslim World report as a part of Cato

Institution Studies. What I did here was to take the Human Freedom Index, which is an amazing overview of personal

and economic freedom in the world, and four corners of the world but I wanted to look into Muslim

majority countries specifically why well I'm working on Islam and freedom and

its implications in all levels from a philosophical

theological level and in terms of practical reality as well. Secondly it's

interesting to look at Muslim majority countries because as this report shows, the Muslim

majority world is the least free part of the world on average.

I'm emphasizing on average because also there is huge diversity in the so-called

Muslim majority world. There are about 50 or 51 Muslim majority countries in the world.

We were able to look into 40 of them

...