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| The more Islamic, the fewer Freedoms |
“So what brought you to Phuket”, I asked Pieter, the septuagenarian Dutchman we were chatting with at the Yacht Haven dockside.
He thinks a bit, rubs his chin and teeth, and says “Freedom”.
What sort of freedom did he have here in Thailand that he didn’t have in Holland?
He pointed to his ochre-red shorts, sun-faded, and said that’s all he wore during the day. As night fell he put on a shirt. When he rode his motorbike he was helmetless. That sort of freedom, he said. To be oneself, and not mollycoddled by a Nanny-state bureaucracy, or stifled by peer pressure to dress this way or that.
We knew what he meant, having just been to the Similan Islands and climbed Sail Rock, which would give palpitations to the Occupational Health and Safety bureaucrats. Indeed, it would not be allowed without a “proper” path and fences around the precipitous drops. Instead, in free Thailand, there’s a rickety path, occasional wooden steps, ropes studded with rusting nails, and the top is a clear vertiginous rock, the edge of which I couldn’t even go near. But if I’d wanted to, I could’ve. It's your own responsibility; you look after yourself.
This brought to mind another freedom connection, with a hat-tip to JW commenter Treah, for inspiring the research, summarised in the chart above. (Kinana, too)
Here’s what I did: found the latest statistics on Political Rights (PR) and Civil Liberties (CL) from the non-partisan think tank Freedom House. I added the two numbers together to get a combined number: 2 being a “perfect” score for civil and political rights and 14 the least free.
Then I got the percentage of Muslim population in each country and calculated the correlation between those. This came to 0.65, which is statistically significant. A figure of 1 means that there is a 100% complete correlation between A and B; a figure of zero means no relation at all between A and B.
Holland is the country with the largest percentage of Muslims (7%) which still has a “perfect” civil and political rights score of 2.
Once you move to the right of that on the X-axis, with greater percentage of Muslims in society, you move progressively away from a free society.
There is no country in the world with more than 7% Muslims that has a perfect score on the Freedom Index.
The more Islam, the less freedom.
There could be criticism of this methodology on the basis that
(a) there are other factors at work and
(b) a correlation does not imply causation
This is true. But...
In regards to (a) to say there are other factors at work does not invalidate the factor of Islam; just as the cigarette makers tried for years to say that there were other factors in the cause of cancer, apart from tobacco. True enough, again, but the main cause was tobacco.
I believe more research on the connection of Freedom vs Islam % of population would show not only other factors, but that the Islamic factor is the key. Why? Because more Islam means more Sharia and more Sharia means more draconian laws, based on the Koran, not the rule of man, least of all the rule of democracy.
Sharia is inherently, and by clear self-definition, against democracy, since democracy is a blasphemy (only Allah can make laws and they are delivered via the theocracy, the imams, Ayatollahs, mullahs, and so on; not by independent laws applicable to all). And Sharia is inimical to innovation (bida), which of course is stifling to developing man-made rules and laws and developing a vibrant economy, a prerequisite for civil freedoms.
Regarding (b), correlation does not necessarily mean causality. True enough. But often -- perhaps mostly -- it does. The correlation between cigarette smoking and cancer has proven to be a causality. Are we perhaps to suggest that the converse is the case? That it is the lack of freedom that leads to more Islam? That would be like saying “cancer causes cigarette smoking”. It is surely the increase of Islam in a society that leads to less freedom. After all, there’s contempt for freedom amongst orthodox Muslims, those that follow the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran most literally.
"Freedom go to Hell".
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| What Muslims in London think of our freedoms |
Sources:
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Update (8 Feb 2011): From "Islam and Democracy - Much Hard Work Needed" by Daniel Pipes, quotes studies showing that more Islam = fewer political rights.
Present realities are far from encouraging, for tyranny disproportionately afflicts Muslim-majority countries. Swarthmore College's Frederic L. Pryor concluded in a 2007 analysis in the Middle East Quarterly that, with some exceptions, "Islam is associated with fewer political rights."
Saliba Sarsar looked at democratization in 17 Arabic-speaking countries and, writing in the same journal, found that "between 1999 and 2005 … not only is progress lacking in most countries, but across the Middle East, reform has backslid."
Update (27 October 2013): See also here. There are only three Islam-majority countries that have a high score on democracy, in each case being classified as "Flawed Democracy"].
Update (4 September 2017): See new post about a new book by Dr Hammond: "Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat"
