Islam and Freedom
Dean
There is a belief in widespread circulation, mostly spread by conservative pundits and general hawks (Mark Steyn and the Little Green Footballs crew spring immediately to mind) that Islam is an inherently intolerant, slavery-oriented religion incompatible with democratic pluralism. The picture they paint is often of a dying West allowing the growing cancer of Islam to spread, with liberalism having weakened us to the point where we no recognize the threat or have the will to fight it.
If this picture is true, we should be seriously considering forbidding any muslims to emigrate into our lands, and we should look with suspicion on all muslims within our borders.
It is, however, untrue. By objective, scientific measure.
Scientific? Yep. Political scientists have for years gathered data to measure how free and democratic the nations of the world are. The two most common data sets are Polity and Freedom House. Of those two, the most readily accessible and easy to work with is Freedom House. Since 1972 they have been publishing annual reports on freedom in every country and significant territory on the world, measuring them on civil and political freedoms and using the same basic criteria from year to year. Their ratings on civil and political freedoms work on a scale of 1-7, with 1 being most free and 7 being least free. The numbers on each country represent civil and political freedoms. A combined average rating of 2.5 or better earns a country a "free" rating, and that country is counted as a liberal democracy. A combined average rating of between 3 and 5.5 is "partly free" and is counted as an electoral democracy, much akin to America or the United Kingdom in the 19th century. Also, Freedom House gathers their data by sending international teams of observers to the countries in question whenever possible, and they include real data gathered from the ground. So Cuba, for example, may claim to enshrine freedom of speech and press into law, but the Freedom House people are not idiots and correctly rate Cuba as one of the least-free nations on Earth. Also the thugs in charge of the so-called Democratic Republic of Congo aren't fooling anybody.
(More on Freedom House methodology right here.)
You can get data on every country's annual rating going back to 1972, but for simplicity's sake it's usually easiest to just look at the last ten years for any given country. So I posed a simple question: are liberal democratic (i.e. free) and electoral democratic (i.e. partly free) nations particularly troubled by the presence of Islam within their borders? And, do countries become less free when Islam has a major foothold?
In asking this question I looked at every single sovereign nation in the world which is both democratic and whose population is at least 10% muslim. The below report is what I found. All numbers are as of 2004, which were released in early 2005. (The numbers for 2005 should be released in the next few months.)
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ALBANIA
Freedom House: Electoral Democracy (3,3). 70% muslim, 30% Christian.
BAHRAIN
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,5). 100% muslim (70% Shia, 30% Sunni)
BANGLADESH
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,4). 83% Muslim, 16% Hindu, 1% other.
BENIN
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (2,2). 20% Muslim, 30% Christian, 50% indigenous beliefs
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,4). 40% muslim, 50% Christian, 10% other.
BULGARIA
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (1,2). 12.1% muslim, 83.8 Bulgarian Orthodox Christian, 4.1% other.
BURKINA FASO
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,4). 40% muslim, 50% indigenous belief, 10% Christian.
BURUNDI
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,5). 10% Muslim, 23% indigenous beliefs, 67% Christian.
COMOROS
Freedom House: Electoral Democracy (5,4). 98% Muslim, 2% Christian
CYPRUS (Greek)
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (1,1). 18% muslim, 78% Greek Orthodox Christian, 4% other.
DJIBOUTI
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,5). 94% muslim, 6% Christian.
ETHIOPIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,5). 45-55% muslim, 35-40% Christian, 12% other.
FRANCE
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (1,1). 5-10% muslim, 83-88% Roman Catholic, 2% Protestant, 1% Jewish.
GAMBIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,4). 90% muslim, 9% Christian, 1% other.
GEORGIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,4). 11% muslim, 65% Georgian Orthodox Christian, 10% Russian Orthodox Christian, 8% Armenian Apostolic Christian, 6% other.
GHANA
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (2,2). 16% muslim, 21% indigenous beliefs, 63% Christian
GUINEA-BISSAU
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (6,4). 45% Muslim, 50% indigenous, 5% Christian
INDIA
Freedom house: Liberal democracy (2,3) 12% muslim, 81% Hindu, 2% Christian, 5% other.
INDONESIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (3,4). 88% muslim, 8% Christian, 4% other.
ISRAEL
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (1,3). 14.6% muslim, 80.1% Jewish, 2.1% Christian, 3.2% other.
JORDAN
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,5). 92% muslim, 6% Christian, 2% other.
KENYA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (3,3). 10% muslim, 78% Christian, 12% other
KUWAIT
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,5). 85% muslim, 15% other.
MACEDONIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (3,3). 30% muslim, 67% Macedonian Orthodox Christian, 3% other.
MALAYSIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,4). Percentages not available, but listed religious groups are Muslim, Buddhist, Daoist, Hindu, and Other, with Islam listed as the official state religion
MALI
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (2,2). 90% muslim, 9% indigenous belief, 1% Christian.
MALAWI
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (3,4). 20% muslim, 75% Christian, 5% other.
MAURITIUS
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (1,2). 16.6% muslim, 52% Hindu, 28% Christian, 3% other.
MOROCCO
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,5). 98.7% muslim, 1.1% Christian, 0.2% Jewish.
MOZAMBIQUE
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (3,4). 20% muslim, 30% Christian, 50% indigenous beliefs
NIGER
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,4). 80% muslim, 20% other.
NIGERIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,4). 50% muslim, 40% Christian, 10% other.
SENEGAL
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (2,3). 94% muslim, 6% other.
SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
Freedom House: Liberal democracy (3,2). 19% muslim, 65% Orthodox Christian, 4% Roman Catholic, 12% other.
SIERRA LEONE
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,3). 60% Muslim, 30% indigenous beliefs, 10% Christian.
SINGAPORE
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,4). No percentages available, but religions are listed as Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, and Other.
TANZANIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,3). 35% Muslim, 30% Christian, 35% indigenous beliefs
TURKEY
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (3,4). 99.8% muslim.
UGANDA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,4). 16% muslim, 66% Christian, 18% indigenous beliefs
YEMEN
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (5,5). No percentages. Predominantly Shia and Sunni muslim.
ZAMBIA
Freedom House: Electoral democracy (4,4). 24-49% "muslim and hindu", 50-75% Christian. Note: I have no idea what the hell "muslim and hindu" means, or what the wild differences in percentages are all about.
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One thing that's noticeable right away is that the percentage of muslims fluctuates from 10% to 100%, but with no immediately discernible relationship to how free the nation is.
There are also some things that may surprise. For example, Pakistan is not on the list, but frankly it shouldn't be. Yet Yemen does make the list because, despite its huge human rights issues, it is still free enough to make it into the family of democracies. Just barely, but it is head and shoulders above such deplorable nations as Saudi Arabia or Syria.
Also, the Freedom House folks are cautious in their rulings. We might hope to see Afghanistan and Iraq listed among the world's democracies, but they aren't yet; a nation must prove to have stable governments and regular elections, and show that it is both willing and able to protect and enforce the rights it claims to grant, before it can be counted even as partly free. Chances are good that either Iraq or Afghanistan will move up significantly when the 2005 ratings come out, but don't expect them to snap up to the 1 and 2 rankings just yet. The best we can hope for is measurable progress.
One thing you will find particularly interesting is to click the link I have provided for each nation and look at the record for the last 10 years. Most of these nations show a trend toward greater and greater freedom, with only occasional lapses. Only a handful trend worse over time or seem stuck in partial freedom.
Of the liberal democracies, I can detect no relation to the percentage of muslims in the population. Benin is 20% muslim, Bulgaria 12%, Greek Cyprus 18%, France 10%, Ghana 16%, India 12%, Israel 15%, Mali 90%, Mauritius 17%, Senegal 94%, and Serbia & Montenegro 19%. In looking at the reports on each of these liberal democracies, none are on any great downward trend in freedom. Stories of vandalism of synagogues in France may be troubling and should be watched, but the democratically elected government there is addressing those criminal acts, not encouraging them.
Some of these nations do have a history of troubles, but Serbia for example has made a most amazing transition, from unfree under Slobodan Milosevic to free in only 10 or so years (much credit must go to the Clinton administration for that, by the way--anyone but me remember the conservatives who were kicking Clinton around for "screwing up" that operation?).
Finally, as a quick sample, of the partly free nations which are rated 3.5 or better (thus being closer to free liberal democracies), over the last 10 years here is the trend:
Albania at 70% muslim has fluctuated wildly but is more free today than 10 years ago.
Indonesia at 88% muslim has grown steadily more free--even as islamo-fascist thugs try to terrorize them into moving backwards.
Kenya at 10% muslim has grown steadily more free.
Macedonia at 30% muslim has grown moderately more free.
Malawi is 20% muslim and has grown somewhat less free.
Mozambique at 20% muslim has been rather static.
Sierra Leone at 60% muslim has grown rapidly more free.
Tanzania at 35% muslim has grown rapidly more free.
Turkey at 99.8% muslim has become somewhat more free.
In short, regardless of the percentage of muslims in the population, the trend in most of these nations is toward greater and greater freedom (although Albania sure has staggered a lot). The only nation in this group to have regressed significantly is only 20% muslim, while nations with 35, 60, and even 99% muslim populations have measurably increased in freedom.
It is true that if you look through all the Freedom House data, you will find a lot of muslim nations in the "unfree" camp. But you will find Christian, Buddhist, and other nations listed there as well. Just for example, Burma is overwhelmingly buddhist, Cuba is overwhelmingly Christian but is ruled by a secularist tyrant, and Syria is overwhelmingly muslim but is ruled by secularist thugs. These are among the least-free nations on Earth, right alongside North Korea and China as oppressive monster regimes. Even the hideous Iran rates slightly higher.
This is not to say that the Islamic world doesn't have a problem. It does. Any religion dominated by Saudi Arabia and Iran most certainly has a problem. But this is a problem that muslims, and the entire world, need to address. We're fools if we just shrug and say, "well, that's muslims for you" whenever human rights are trampled and human lives wasted.
On a more cheerful note, you will also find that the general trend in the vast majority of the nations of the world, regardless of the dominant religion, is toward greater and greater freedom over time, with backsliders being rather unusual (although sadly, great nations like Russia are among the backsliders, while hellholes like North Korea remain terminally stuck at the bottom of the barrel).
Furthermore, it is worth contemplating that no nation rated "partly free" or better has ever gone to war with any other nation so rated. Such nations have gone to war when they were unfree, or have gone to war with neighbors that were unfree. But a democratic nation going to war with another democratic nation? Never. It has simply never happened--and the data set on that is enormous.
FINAL OBSERVATION: here in America we hear a lot about how Europeans are having trouble with gang violence and terrorism from their muslim populations (Mark Steyn and Charles Johnson, are your ears ringing?). Such stories seem to come predominantly from places like Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In each of those cases, muslims are well under 10% of the population. The Netherlands, for example, is 4.4% muslim--so much for the notion that they're being overrun by the kind of brutes who killed Theo Van Gogh. Similarly, while I have no exact figure for how many muslims the British have in their midsts, I see that only 4% of their population is either Indian or Pakistani, which is where most of their muslims would certainly come from. If the British are even 5% muslim it would be shocking.
In short, those nations with a problem with muslim criminals don't have a muslim problem. They have a problem with excessive tolerance for barbarians.
Related Posts (on one page):
Those people, like al Quaeda types, really just appear to be people who want to rule as totalitarians and see Islam as a vehicle for their quest. Not necessarily the rank and file, but the leadership.
And the press certainly lets themselves be played that way, don't they?
Certain people, if they think they can get away with it, will do nasty, selfish, brutish things. That's a constant truth and nothing can be done about except make it plain that stepping beyond the pale of civilized behavior will result in swift retribution and little sympathy.
I bet those countries that are having problems with muslim criminal activity are also having problems with their home-grown thugs. I would bet twenty US dollars they are. And I rarely bet.
There are large, tolerant, even syncretic strains of Islam that do not get nearly enough press.
Sadly, for many in the West, bin Laden and Zawahiri are the faces we see most often. And before that, it was the Ayatollahs.
Ibrahim Hooper
Sami al Arian
Yassir Arafat
Osama bin Laden
Muqtada al Sadr
Whoever killed Theo Van Gogh
I can't remember his name, but the very slimy, previous Saudi ambassador to the US.
Any and every Muslim that does not unequivocally deplore the fatwah against Rushdie.
I could go on.
I'm not saying that I think that they are what Islam is, I'm saying that they are quite often portrayed as what Islam is all about. And the media helps this portrayal as they call somebody a moderate Muslim and I google his name and discover that Jews are pigs and Palestine should be where Israel is and...
Until the public face of Islam isn't quite often shown as murderous 8th century barbarians and their apologists then Islam is going to have a bad reputation.
Once again, I don't feel like being attacked so I am going to say as strongly as possibly that I don't think Islam is inherently bad. Just about any religion can be used for horrible reasons and I feel that Islam is being used in that way now by many wanna-be and present totalitarians.
Nevermind.
Carry On.
As you were.
Sadly, the public face is defined by where the media point their cameras. And for whatever reason (I could speculate, but I won't), they choose to point at scum like Zawahiri, not at reasonable people like yourself. As I'm sure you're aware, it's an uphill battle to get anyone to notice the reasonable people when the scum get all the press.
I've been having an email conversation with Dean, to the effect that I hope against hope that you are the true face of Islam in the modern world. Frankly, I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.
I just want to be left in peace, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. Militant Islam is after me, and I'll have to shoot back, Am I wrong?
Bill
Exactly, and here is a prime example in England (Britain's war on pigs).
One thing you will absolutely find to be an undeniable trend is that worldwide, the overall trend is toward greater freedom over the last 33 years, with a particularly marked increase starting around 1990 or so.
So it should be a fairly simple matter to take that sheet, omit all nations with negligible or nonexistant muslim presence, and do whatever analysis you please. I would suggest using the CIA World Factbook site to find the nations with significant muslim presence, as the nations are listed alphabetically and you can just search for "muslim" on each nation's page. For the kind of analysis you propose I'd suggest starting with a minimum of 5% muslim instead of the 10% I used.
Anyway, as I say, I'll publish it if you run the numbers.
If you wanted to get crazy detailed, you'd try to find some source that listed the percentage of muslims year by year for the last 33 years but I think that would be going well above and beyond the call of duty and would probably be the subject of a master's thesis. I think if a country is 10% muslim it's reasonable to assume they've had a significant muslim presence for the last couple of decades.
I would suggest that Islam has very little to do with that either way. After 1990 you didn't have the USSR actively trying to destabilize their borders and we didn't have much of the real-politik reasons to be very friendly with dictators as we weren't fighting the USSR.
Also, the fall of the USSR gave lots of hope to people all over their sphere of influence.
That's happening in the Middle East now.
People are people and they all want power for themselves over their own lives. For most people the best, and indeed only, hope of that is the freedom that comes from democracy. For some it's ruling others and they don't want freedom or democracy. These totalitarians will use whatever tools they have. The 20th century drove home the fact that a compelling ideology and brute force work much better than brute force alone. Fascists, commies and the current crop of Islamo-fascists all use their ideology to control the people who control the population.
We're not fighting Muslims, we're fighting people who are using Islam.
Anyway, as I was reading all this, I was also absorbing the news about the latest terrorist assault and hostage taking by Chechens in southern Russia. Were I a Russian citizen, I would fervently hope that my government would end this problem with the Chechnya moslems by ethnically cleansing the entire country.
If things got that way in this country, don't think even for a minute that we wouldn't be putting such people in concentration camps. Just like we did with the Japs in 1942.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Lots of sites of the Muslim population by percentage e.g. here. Getting the historical record would be a shitload of work.
But the idea was to look for changes in muslim populations, changes in freedom 1, 2, ... years after the change in the percentage, and see if there was a significant relationship.
The more I think about it, the more it's not a job for amateur sleuthing. If there is a secular trend towards freedom, that has to be included in the model. If there are regional effects (e.g. Soviet Block or Monroe Doctrine) then residuals are not going to be uncorrelated, etc etc.
However, the question of islam is settled: throughout the democratic world muslims are found as either substantial minorities, or pluralities, or majorities. The religion is clearly compatible with freedom and pluralism. Now let us get on with defeating the worst lunatics who would deny that.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~dmercer/Freedom+Islam.html
The correlation coefficient between freedom ratings and % Muslim is a bit over .5, which means Islam and oppression are not just randomly correlated. They do hand in hand, statistically.
Spreadsheet file for further number crunching (in OpenOffice.org format):
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~dmercer/Freedom+Islam.sxc
Cheers,
David Mercer
Tucson, AZ
Run back your analysis 20 years and you'd find a strong correlation between secularism and oppression, since all communist nations were and are secularist. Would you suggest that secularsim is inherently oppressive?
I once met a guy who smoked pot while he fought in Vietnam, and won several medals. Think the pot did it?
What your analysis does not show--but mine does--is that there are numerous free nations with substantial muslim populations, and even with large muslim populations most have grown only more free with time. If Islam is a potent cause of oppression, how do you explain Turkey, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Macedonia, and all those other nations with huge muslim populations that have been growing in freedom over the last decade or two? Luck?
And what do you plan to do with this correlation of yours?
That's what they've been trying to do for nearly 10 years.
The Chechens were not terroristic. The closest they came to attacking civilians was killing the rulers that Russia sent in. The Russian military has been kidnapping, killing and ransoming the bodies of men from 15-60 for years.
The Russians are not innocent in Chechnya. I followed that conflict very closely from 1999-2001. They prided themselves on only attacking military targets and what they saw as puppet rulers imposed from Russia.
After 9/11 their website, kavkaz.org, had condolences for the US. Then, Bush basically threw them under the bus and gave Russia tacit approval for anything they did there. Starting in about 2002 they started accepting help from jihadi types. At first they weren't very thrilled about it, there were numerous articles on the Chechen gov't website (since closed down).
They've been fighting a genocidal war for 7 years. The Russians gave Grozny the 'Hama treatment'. It used to be a fairly large city, now it's a pile of rubble with a few people living in the bombed out ruins.
The major reason Putin gave for the war was some apartment bombings. The Chechens denied involvement, not usual for terrorist types, and there was another blast averted that the FSB claimed was a test.
The Chechens are fighting for their lives, all of them. I don't like what has happened since they allied with terrorists, but they are desperate. They are being hunted down like animals and have been for 7 years. I feel sorry for the Chechens. They are good people in a horrible situation.
Having tried playing democratic Mr Niceguys, more than an insubstantial number of Russians are saying that what their great country really needs is another Josef Stalin, the greatest czar in the history of the Russian state.
And yes, the failure to solve the Chechnya problem (actually, there's nothing wrong with Chechnya if they can just permanently remove the Chechnians) is one of the factors leading Russia on the road back to authoritarianism without communism.
And if any of you who thought Russia was a terrible threat to us under communism, wait until you get a load of what they will act like with a strong government backed up by free enterprise and capitalism.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Meanwhile, the Christian Democrat party, one of Germany's two largest political parties, has recently taken power there--as it has many times in the past without threatening Germany's current status as a liberal democracy.
Furthermore, ethnic cleansing is and always has been an evil, barbaric practice, and often causes far more problems than it solves.
Take Bahrain(5,5) - "According to Bahrain's 2002 constitution, the king is the head of all three branches of government. He appoints cabinet ministers and members of the Consultative Council. The National Assembly consists of 40 popularly elected members of the Representative Council and 40 members of the Shura Council appointed by the king. The National Assembly may propose legislation, but the cabinet must draft the laws. Formal political parties are illegal in Bahrain, but the government allows political societies or groupings to operate and organize activities in the country."
If that fits anyone's definition of electoral democracy, I don't trust them. It certainly doesn't fit Freedom House's. This is a standard post-feudal monarchy, of a sort recognizable to Marie Antoinette or Henry VIII. Three or four is probably the Confederate States of America. America of the Colonial era probably was in the 3-4 range. Sixes and sevens, they are WORSE than monarchy - they are authoritarian despots, usurpers, feudal lords, and slavers.
If I were making the judgements, I'd only select countries which were plurality Muslim, and preferably majority. Citing "France" or "Cyprus" in a defence of Islam is just stupid. Judging Islam by countries where they don't even have a significant say in the governance is silly.
That leaves us with:
Albania(3,3)- an ex-communist state where I'm sure a fair number of those 'muslims' would qualify as atheist in most countries.
Bahrain(5,5)-described above.
Bangladesh(4,4)- from the overview: Bangladesh continued in 2003 to be plagued by lawlessness, rampant corruption, and violent political polarization, all of which threaten its prospects for consolidating democratic institutions and achieving economic development and reform.
Comoros(5,4) - "Parliament has not met since Assoumani's 1999 coup..."
Djibouti(5,5) - " The trappings of representative government and formal administration have had little relevance to the real distribution and exercise of power in Djibouti."
Ethiopia(5,5) - " Ethiopia has yet to experience truly competitive elections."
Gambia(4,4) - " The Jammeh government continued to have little tolerance for outspoken members of the political opposition. Lamine Was Juwara, of the National Democratic Action Movement party, was awaiting trial on sedition charges"
Indonesia(3,4) - the one big example of improvement
Jordan(5,5), Kuwait(4,5), Malaysia(5,4)
Mali(2,2) - by far the shining star of the Islamic world.
Morocco(5,5) - Two words - Western Sahara
Niger(4,4)
Nigeria(4,4)
Senegal(2,3) - we'll see if the manage a clean transition when Wade isn't eligible for reelection.
Sierra Leone(4,3),
Turkey(3,4) - free to the extent they are because Ataturk explicitly repudiated Islamic influence on government, and tasked the military with enforcing his ban. In essence, he substitute a kind of military noblesse oblige for Islam as the ultimate source of government. Also, the Kurds may be in improving state, but they are hardly anybody's definition of free.
Yemen(5,5)- I have a sneaking suspicion they won't be this 'good' on the next report.
All five countries with ones, and 6 of 8 with twos, came off the list. Meanwhile, 8 of 11 countries with fives stayed on. Pinning a case for Islam's democratic redemption on Mali, and Senegal seems desperate to me.
There is one free state in the middle east and North Africa - the only non-Muslim one. All of the 5 non-free high-income countries in the world are Muslim. (Brunei, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.) Three of the 5 partly free high-income countries are. At least 5 of the 7 not-free middle income countries are Muslim (Libya - which misses high-income status by a mere $6 per person, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia) It may be that oil is averting poverty in these countries, and they are otherwise underdeveloped, but it is known that oppression breeds poverty, and vice versa. These states, alone among countries of the world, escaped this vicious cycle without escaping oppression. And virtually all are Muslim.
It may not be that Islam isn't the problem, but it sure isn't helping.
I also looked at the five year change in freedom versus percent muslim. There is a slight relationship between increase in percentage muslim, and decrease in freedom, but the t-stat is only marginally significant at -1.7.
Just for yucks I created regional dummies but they don't appear to explain anything.
I will email Dean if he wants the spreadsheet, however, I think this is really dangerously oversimplifying. There's a reason Rudy Rummel has a PhD and many years experience before he puts his name on something.
A number of countries were eliminated due to missing data: some Pacific islands like Naura. Also my Muslim data separated out the Gaza strip and the West Bank.
Within Asia, where there is a range, I find a much lower (negative) correlation with the level of %Muslim and freedom, and insignificant relationship between %Muslim and 5 year change in freedom.
Furthermore, I call bullshit on your "muslims in former communist countries and Turkey don't count." No, you don't get to cherry-pick your muslims and say the ones who don't match your prejudices aren't real muslims.
Still further: the claim of the Islamophobes is that even a tiny minority of muslims are a threat to freedom. I set a minimum threshhold of 10%, which is MUCH higher than found in the United States or the UK or the Netherlands where supposedly Islam is eating away at our core.
Still, what say we up it to 20%? That's one in five people. Surely if the Mark Steyns of the world are correct, having 1 in 5 people as muslims would destroy all our precious freedoms, since the 1 or 2% we have now suppedly represent a looming danger to the West.
But let's compromise: How about we raise it to 20% muslim, and at least a 4,4 rating? Then what do we have?
Albania: Fairly static, but more free today than ten years ago.
Bangladesh: Yes, like many fledgeling democracies, they have a problem with lawlessness and corruption. What of it? Do you have any idea what America was like in 1830? Hell, do you have any idea what it was like in 1930?
Benin: has remained fairly steady on the higher range of freedom.
Bosnia-Herzegovina: Amazing progress in only ten years.
Burkina Faso: Steady progress toward greater freedom.
Gambia: Unquestionably moving toward greater freedom over the last 10 years.
Indonesia: Enormous leaps forward.
Macedonia: Had some problems a few years ago, but is freer today than 10 years ago.
Mali: Thank you for at least acknowledging this to be one of the freest nations on Earth.
Malawi: Sad deterioration in the last 10 years, though still free.
Mozambique: Not much progress, but freer today than 10 years ago.
Niger: Has overcome some serious problems but despite recent improvements it's not clear what the future trend is.
Nigeria: Extremely positive progress.
Senegal: Undeniable steady progress
Sierra Leon: Undeniable massive progress
Tanzania: Undeniable steady progress
Turkey: They're nearly 100% muslim, and you don't get to dismiss them by saying they're fake muslims or that their democratically elected government oppresses their muslim-hood. They accept secular government, and thorugh democratic means have slowly become more and more free.
Zambia: Unstable. General trend toward less free.
And there you have it, once again, which I emphasize to make my point:
The hypothesis that Islam is incompatible with freedom has been falsified by the undeniable trend toward greater and greater freedom throughout the vast majority of these nations. If it were true that Islam destroys freedom, most of these nations would be moving backward not forward.
It may be that muslims are somewhat slower to accept democratic pluralism than Christians. Then again, it took the Christian world damn near 2000 years to accept it. Do you really want to say that because these guys are behind us by a few decades they're incapable of being better?
And why shit on all this progress, just to vindicate the worldview of people like Osama Bin Laden anyway?
Therefore, your correlation has a weak causative fact at best, and has proven that it can be overcome.
I showed my numbers to Rudy and he was most impressed, in case you're wondreing. ;-)
My entire point was lost ... I guess I should be more blunt. But then, that would make me terribly un-PC. Can't have that, you know.
OK ... countries with government ruled by Islam - where do they score on the freedom scale vs countries ruled by other religions and countries with separation of church/temple/mosque and state?
I think we know that answer ....
I similarly replicate your conclusion that there are Muslim countries that score low (i.e. free) on the freedom score or are improving, and in a range from 20% to near 100% on the %Muslim score, or more or less what you said, "the hypothesis that Islam is absolutely incompatible with freedom is soundly rejected by this data. I also see, as you do, a slight secular trend towards democracy over the past five years.
I also tried to shed some light on whether the percentage of Islam in the population has *any* effect, one way or another, on the change in freedom. Hence the regressions of 5 year change in freedom versus current %Muslim. It requires the assumption that the %Muslim number is consistently measured in time across the nations in the sample and is current.
What is inconclusive in that data is the relationship of %Muslim to change in freedom. To say that Islam has no bearing on movement towards freedom you would need to find an absence of a relationship. What I found was a mix of negative and positive relationships, some with meaningful t-stats, some without, based on how I sliced and diced.
Dean you are not factoring the demographics by geography. The Muslim population is not spread over the countryside, but concentrated in large metropolitan areas and to your list of Nations you need to add Norway and Sweden. There is a dramatic rise in types of crime virutually unknown until recent times. When 75% of rapes for instance are coming from about 5% of the population that is a reason for attention.
That is quite apparent, the ignore it and maybe it will go away reaction is a great part of the problem. Those who address these issues are attacked as racists.
When Muslim Groups in a European Nation put bounties on the heads of Jews, when principals tell the parents of Jewish children they cannot guarantee their safety and they should remove them from the schools to which they go, when Anti-Israel parades breakout into Anti-Jewish riots.
These are of more than passing concern and not to be dismissed lightly.
Use of the term vandalism is misleading do a google search using the key words
France firebomb