From the Mailbag: More On Islam and Freedom
Dean
My analysis of the Freedom House data on Islam and freedom certainly set off a buzz. Some foaming islamophobes who reject the fundamental American values of pluralism and tolerance insisted that the data was irrelevant, blathering about "dhimmitude" and embracing the fearful view that most muslims are at war with non-muslims. Some who still hold to the discredited view that Iraq is a "quagmire" and a failure were cautiously supportive, but cleaved to the equally paranoid view that all organized religion is an enemy of freedom, which cannot be supported with the data we have; all of the freest nations on Earth have substantial populations who are members of an organized religion, and many among the freest of the free have official state religions, such as the United Kingdom, Israel, and most of Scandinavia.
More sophisticated and thoughtful critics pointed to the fact that a large number of muslim nations are oppressive, but that doesn't prove anything; correlation is not causation. If you simply look at the all the nations of the world with large muslim populations, a majority have been trending toward greater and greater freedom.
For those who want more data, our friend Robert K. Bell performed a rigorous analysis using Excel, comparing every nation on earth and keying on change over time, i.e. those nations which have grown more free, less free, or stayed about the same. He sends the following note to describe his analysis:
He is of course referring to the new Battlestar Galactica, which is indeed a most awesome show, and yeah, that's a great line. But no, it's not naive to ask an open-minded question.In a sense I am being deliberately naive in my view. That religion may be used as a tool of repression by already non-free regimes is certainly plausible, but there's also probably truth to the notion that religion often teaches values like honesty, thrift, [etc.] that would increase freedom.
Rather than complicating matters, I cued in on the notion of "emerging" and decided to use a simple ten year difference in the freedom score, and regress that against %Muslim in three scenarios:
1. "Emerging" countries - those whose score has improved by at least two.
2. "Backsliding" countries - those whose score has declined by at least two.
3. All countries.This makes it very clear. In all cases there is a good range of data both in terms of variation in both %Muslim and change in freedom, and there is no signficant relationship in any case between the two.
So for those who would say that there is some intrinsic problem with Islam, the burden of proof would be on them.
On an unrelated note, we watched the episode where Adama says "There's some truth here. Care to take me to it?" What an awesome show.
Cheers,
RKB
For those who would like to see it, here is Robert's rigorous 10 year analysis of freedom's march, with mulitple regression and even ANOVA analysis. As he says, there is no significant relationship between Islam and the trend toward, or away from, freedom. Obviously, like any religion, Islam can be used as a tool of oppression (as it is in nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran), but once a society starts the march toward freedom, it usually continues in that direction regardless of what religion or religions are prevalent.
Terrific work, Robert.
Related Posts (on one page):
- The KGB and the Middle East
- From the Mailbag: More On Islam and Freedom
- Islam and Freedom
The grunt work, of course is making sure the country names match, then lining up the country names.
Kindest Regards,
RKB
Religions fall into two basic categories: tribal religions and universal religions. Judaism, Hinduism, Shinto, and others are tribal religions. Many tribal religions don't even allow converts. Universal religions are generally proselytizing and adherents generally believe that their faith is the true one. Christianity and Buddhism are both universal religions.
Islam shares features of both. For many Arabs it's definitely a tribal religion. Consider the emphasis on Arabic language. For non-Arabs, not so much.
Religions rise in milieus. The milieu of Christianity was Rome and Rome is still present within Christianity. Part of the milieu of Islam was Arab tribalism and it's still there, too. Since it's been there from the beginning it's hard to disentangle Arab tribalism from Islam itself but they're not the same thing.
Tribalism is by itself not necessarily a bad thing. Humans are inherently tribalist, and we can see that around the world. Even loving a particular sports team (go White Sox!) is a form of tribalism. What's troubling is if the tribalism becomes the center of your existence--imagine for example if my tribalist White Sox fandom led me to want to kill Arnold Harris instead of just bantering with him.
The Jews are very very tribalist. Yet they integrate well into pluralist societies without losing their group identity. "Arabism" (or "pan-Arabism" if you prefer) has shown itself to be quite pathological. Baathism is just such a pathological beast. But, can it be turned into something non-pathological? I'd like to think so.
This is really good work from Robert, thanks for highlighting it on Dean's World. It takes guts to go against the prevailing "wisdom" that Islam is somehow a more repressive religion than other religions. There has been much said about the inclusive and diverse Muslim societies of the early middle ages, but some people seem to think that was an aberration.
My (feeble) analysis is that the current situation in the middle east in particular is classic tyranny at work, the religion of the region happened to be dominated by Islam, but that was an accident of geography. The real driving force behind the rise of despotism in the middle east is based on a long history of tribalism coupled with sudden petroleum wealth. This gave the dominant factions in the area a tremendous capability to expand and entrench their rule, and an opportunity to settle some long-standing grudges. Islam comes into the picture becasue it is common for despots and tyrants to use religion to excuse and/or hide their excesses.
The real driving force behind the rise of despotism in the middle east is based on a long history of tribalism coupled with sudden petroleum wealth.
Yes. Although it should be admitted that another factor in that equation is that during the Cold War the Western powers found it desirable to nurture that despotism rather than discourage it, because at least they weren't communists. A miscalculation? Possibly so, but hindsight is a luxury. Still, the difficulty is encapsulated by this simple question: were we right to support the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, or should we have just let the Soviets have their way in Afghanistan?
My own answer to that question is that we did the right thing initially, but once the Soviets withdrew we made a horrible mistake: we decided that the Cold War was over and we could just walk away and resume minding our own business.
Whoops.
Is that enough of a platitude?