It’s not politically correct to think that some cultures, religions, and traditions are better than others. And perhaps even more taboo is the topic of Islam—and its historical record compared to Christianity, particularly when the two religions come to clash.

It’s worth asking, then, what do history and data have to say on the topic?

One key area of difference is human rights. As I mentioned in an earlier article, Christianity seems to increase respect for human rights across countries, whereas Islam appears to decrease it. Comparisons between countries have led to other interesting conclusions, too. In Finland and Denmark, immigrant groups’ “fiscal contributions to public finances” appear to be inversely correlated with the prevalence of Islam in their countries of origin. Furthermore, immigrants from countries where Islam is more widely practiced tend to commit more crime. These variables are correlated at .35 and .37 in Germany and the Netherlands respectively. One study found that “Islam was the best predictor of crime” in Denmark, surpassing IQ and GDP. The crime correlation was also .696 for Norway, where immigrating from a more Islamic country was also associated with unemployment.

Regarding family matters, Islamic custom shows similarly dismal results. As Jon Miltimore details, marriages between first cousins are common across the Muslim world, partly because of long-standing Islamic tradition going back to the Qur’an. In 2005, for instance, “55 percent of Britain’s huge Pakistani population was married to a first cousin.” In addition to allowing child marriage, Islam also explicitly permits polygamy. Unsurprisingly, in nations where polygamy is most often found, the practice is more common among Muslims than Christians.

As you may suspect, polygamy is a harmful practice. In one paper, Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, and Peter J. Hendrickson ask why monogamy predominates in developed societies. They conclude that it offers a variety of benefits, from reducing crime and domestic abuse to increasing GDP per capita and improving outcomes for children.

Islam’s impact on education is far from beneficial, too. Daniel Suryadarma observes that countries with a greater proportion of Muslim inhabitants tend to perform worse on measures of education, even if one controls “for GDP and democracy.” One study concludes that Muslim countries have likely achieved a Flynn Effect, meaning a gradual increase in average IQs,

by moving towards a Western system of education. … In moving back towards a native system of education, influenced by a highly conservative form of Islam, the Muslim world is thus seemingly reversing the Flynn Effect, at least in the case of Kuwait.

And what of prosperity? According to Suryadarma:

The share of Muslims in a population has a negative effect on economic growth. … Hillman (2007) finds that Muslim societies without any oil reserves have lower incomes than their comparable non-Muslim neighbours, and Kuran (2004) states that commercial practices in Middle Eastern countries have remained the same for eight centuries.

Hillman believes that Islam hobbles economic advancement because it is monomaniacally focused on conquering territory to add to the Muslim world. Thus, rulers of Muslim societies can get away with neglecting domestic development. If true, this dovetails with the view that Islam is, at its core, an ideology designed to sanctify imperialism.

Islam has also led to an extraordinary amount of violence through the centuries. Bill Warner, co-founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI), reckons that, “over the last 1400 years,” Islamism has killed roughly “270 million nonbelievers.” By all accounts, far fewer people have been killed in the name of Christianity, despite its greater age.

Even the oft-cited Crusades resulted in casualties that are orders of magnitude smaller, with estimates ranging anywhere from one million to nine million (including the Christian deaths). That said, as Raymond Ibrahim has argued, “the Crusades were a counterattack on Islam” rather than “an unprovoked assault.”

This history of violence is mirrored today in the cultural attitudes of Islam. In 2010, the Pew Research Center reported that 98 percent of Lebanon’s inhabitants, a 70 percent Muslim country, held “unfavorable opinions” of Jews, and the figures for most other Muslim countries surveyed were similar. Unfavorability was second-lowest among Muslim Nigerians, at 60 percent. However, there was one major outlier. Israeli Arabs were favorably disposed toward Jews by a majority of 56 percent to 35 percent.

These results illustrate the much-noted fact that hatred of Jews is deeply ingrained in Islamic culture. And it can hardly be argued that this hatred is a rational response to Jewish behavior. If that were the case, one would expect the Muslim population in constant contact with Jews—Israeli Muslims—to harbor more animosity toward them rather than less.

There have been many long-winded debates about the implications of Islam’s foundational texts. However, its historical record speaks for itself. Unsurprisingly, across Western countries, the prevalence of Islam is correlated with Islamist terrorism.

This is all to be expected in light of the inherent differences between Islam and other religions. A team headed by linguist Tina Magaard conducted a comparative study of religious texts from the world’s ten most popular faiths. “The texts of Islam,” Magaard summed up, “are clearly distinct from the other religions’ texts, as they, to a higher degree, call for violence and aggression against followers of other faiths.” They also included “direct incitements to terror.” The CSPI likewise contends that Islamic texts contain much more violent rhetoric than the Bible.

Why is Islam so different from other major religions? Presumably, part of the answer is that it emerged in a seventh- to eighth-century Arab milieu which, in some respects, was primitive even compared to the first-century environment in which Christianity had taken shape. For instance, raiding was highly common in Arabia at the time. The aforementioned study of monogamy notes that “when inter-group competition relies on large numbers of motivated young men to engage in continuous raiding … , groups with greater polygyny may generate larger and more motivated pools of males for these risky activities.”

The authors speculate that monogamy provides an overall advantage only “among very complex human societies.” Thus, perhaps Islam was suitable for warlike tribal societies like the one where it originated. Yet unlike Christianity, it is hardly fitting for life in modern times.

The many dangers which Islam presents are criminally under-discussed.

J.D. Vance’s quip that Britain may be an Islamist nuclear power is, of course, not exactly correct and probably wasn’t ideal from the standpoint of diplomacy. After all, it prompted a flurry of criticism from prominent British politicians. Still, in light of all we have seen above, may it not be a step in the right direction for a major American politico to raise concerns about the spread of Islam in the West?

—

Image credit: Pexels