In a sample of 59 countries, America is the 12th most racially tolerant

Sociology textbooks regularly state as if it were God's Truth that the United States is a fundamentally racist country. Let's try something different and instead of maligning a whole country, let's actually look at data.

Between 2010 and 2014, the World Values Survey asked 88,042 people from 59 countries if they would object to having neighbors of a different race.  Here are the percent who answered yes by country:

Percent objecting to a neighbor of a different race

Azerbaijan  58.1
Libya  55.1
Palestine  44.0
Thailand  39.7
Lebanon  36.3
Turkey  35.8
Ecuador  34.5
S. Korea  34.1
Yemen  34.0
Georgia  32.1
Armenia  31.8
Malaysia  31.3
Kuwait  28.1
Kyrgyzstan  28.1
Iraq  27.7
Jordan  27.2
India  25.6  
Estonia  25.4
Cyprus  24.8
Romania  23.5
Belarus  23.1
Japan  22.3
Philippines  21.6
Nigeria  20.9
Ghana  19.9
Algeria  19.8
S, Africa  19.2
Hong Kong  18.8

All Countries  18.6

Russia  17.2
Tunisia  16.9
Ukraine  16.9
Pakistan  15.7
Germany  14.8
Uzbekistan  14.0  
Morocco  13.8
Singapore  12.6
Kazakhstan  11.2
Slovenia  10.9
China  10.5
Mexico  10.2
Peru  9.3
Zimbabwe  8.9
Qatar  8.8
Taiwan  8.4
Netherlands  8.2
Haiti  6.3
Chile  5.6
USA  5.6
Poland  5.5
Australia  5.0
Spain  4.8
Rwanda  3.5
Colombia  3.2
New Zealand  2.9
Sweden  2.8
Brazil  1.9
Uruguay  1.6
Trinidad and Tobago 1.5
Argentina  1.0

So, in a sample of 59 countries, the United States is the 12th most tolerant. The percent of Americans not wanting a neighbor of another race is less than one-third the world average. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves for indicting our country. 

Whites in general are accused of being notoriously racist, but you can see that Western societies tend to be the most tolerant.  The most intolerant regions are Muslim and Asian.

Which religious group is most likely to reject evolution?

The Left dislikes evangelicals as much as they dislike anybody, and one of the reasons they don't like them is because they tend to reject the theory of evolution--which is ironic since the Left rejects the implications of evolution for human nature. But what about Muslims? Don't they reject evolution as well? The Left is usually silent about Muslim fundamentalism.

How many American Muslims don't believe that humans descended from earlier species of animals? General Social Survey (GSS) respondents were asked this question. Here are the percent who answered no listed by religion (sample size = 6,353):

Percent who don't believe humans descended from animals

Muslims  65.6
Christians  65.5
Protestants  63.6
Catholics  36.2
Orthodox Christians  32.1
Jewish   20.1
No religion  19.8
Buddhists   4.5
Hindus   3.2

Muslims are at the top of the list. Compare them to Buddhists and Hindus. An enormous difference.

If fundamentalism is an impediment to a pro-science culture, why isn't it a problem when it's found among Muslims? For the Christian fundamentalists always you have with you, but inviting the growing Muslim world to move to the US is a choice.

UPDATE: My 12-year-old son informs me that Hindus naturally accept evolution because they believe in a God that is an elephant.

Are Muslims in America assimilating or not?

Since today is the anniversary of 9/11, let's take a moment to see how well Muslims are assimilating in American society.  The General Social Survey (GSS) asked respondents, "Consider a person who believes that Blacks are genetically inferior. If such a person wanted to make a speech in your community claiming that Blacks are inferior, should he be allowed to speak, or not?"

In my view, a core value of the American system is free speech.  If you don't believe in allowing people to state controversial opinions in public, you're not much of an American.

Here are the percentages in favor of free speech by religion.  Many American Muslims are blacks--I excluded them since we would expect many of them to oppose free speech for people with messages that make blacks look bad:

Of all religions, Muslims are the least supportive of free speech.

Have attitudes among Muslims improved or worsened over time?  I divided the data into two periods: 1) pre-2010 and 2) this decade:

Unfortunately, support for allowing someone with controversial racial views to speak in public has fallen among Muslims in this decade from 50.0% to 31.8%.  Not good.

The Muslim vote

What idiots ever thought that immigrants would rush to vote for Republicans because they hold traditional values? I'm not sure if they have been idiots or conmen.

Just look at how Muslims have voted in the last few elections. No one should be more socially conservative than Muslims:

Percent voting for the Democratic presidential candidate

2008  Obama 83
2004  Kerry 100
2000  Gore 71
1996  Clinton 100
1992  Clinton 100

Sample sizes are very small, but the picture is very clear.  Even before 9/11, Muslims overwhelmingly voted for the Democrat. When it comes to voting, they don't give a crap about traditional values.

Many not offended by Trump's comments about Muslims

Reuters asked respondents if, "Donald Trump's recent comments about Muslims offend me." While 70% of Democrats said yes, only 27% percent of Republicans agreed.  Less than half (43%) of independents, perhaps the most important group for deciding the next election, said they were offended.

While elites, including moderate Republicans, flipped out over the idea of temporarily banning Muslims, about half of Americans were not upset about it. Trump has shown more clearly than anyone before that elites and ordinary Americans are very far apart on America First issues.

I wondered if Trump hurt himself with independents, but fewer than half seem to care. If we limit independents to those with at most some college, feeling offended drops to 37%.  So Trump jacks up many voters who feel like American leadership cares more about hostile strangers than its own people, while not turning off too many people that he needs to win.  He seems to be light years ahead of Republican strategists and pundits. And he makes it look easy.  

(Hat tip to Audacious for the link!)

Cross-national correlates of corruption

Which kinds of countries are the most corrupt? Here are a few cross-national correlations:

Correlations

IQ -.56
Percent black .28
Percent Muslim .30
Weekly religious attendance .37

So corrupt countries are less intelligent, more black, more Muslim, and more religious. Nordic and English-origin countries--smart, wealthy, post-Protestant/secular--are the least corrupt of all countries. Wealthy Asian nations are also good. (By the way, according to the data, the United States has gotten more corrupt over the past decade.)

More on birth control and abortion cross-nationally

Here are additional correlates of contraceptive use and abortion cross-nationally:

More Muslims, less birth control (r = -.39)
More Muslims, less abortion (r = -.15)
More blacks, less birth control (r = -.51)
More blacks, less abortion (r = -.26)
Higher mean IQ, more birth control (r = .65)
Higher mean IQ, more abortion (r = .20)

The cross-national relationship between percent Muslim and homicide

Continuing my focus on cross-national homicide, I correlated rates with the percent of the population that is Muslim. For a sample of 181 countries, the correlation is -.17 which means that countries with more Muslims tend to have less murder. This is striking when one considers that Muslim-dominated countries tend to be poor and some of them are sub-Saharan African. After adjusting for per capita GDP and percent black, the correlation is likely to be stronger.

One note: I'm going to try to get a better idea of how relilable the homicide data are. I chose coroner's data over criminal justice data simply because I trust public health institutions more, and they tend to report more counts of homicide (suggesting that criminal justice agencies are not reporting some cases). The two systems seem to be pretty consistent in high-income countries, but just eyeballing the data, the counts from the two sources can be very different in poor countries. I suspect that politically-motivated killings in unstable countries complicate things.   

Another look at Muslim fertility

In the comments of the recent post on Muslim fertility, Dr. Charlton expresses skepticism about the validity of the study reported. He writes that we should assume that a peer-reviewed study has been conducted by someone who is dishonest or incompetent. I've been reading and conducting research for almost 20 years and agree with his view. That doesn't mean that every study is actually bad, but the publication process in the social sciences is sufficiently corrupt to cause one to be skeptical. This is one reason that I go to the original data if I can.

Let's do that now with fertility data. I went to the Population Reference Bureau and obtained 2011 total fertility rates (TFR) for Muslim-majority countries. TFR is an estimate of the total number of children the average woman will have based on current birth rates.


2011 Total Fertility Rate

Niger 7.0
Mali 6.4
Somalia 6.4
Afghanistan 6.3
Chad 6.0
Burkina Faso 5.8
Nigeria 5.7
Guinea 5.3
Yemen 5.3
Gambia 5.0
Sierra Leone 5.0
Comoros 4.8
Iraq 4.7
Senegal 4.7
Palestinian territory 4.6
Sudan 4.5
Mauritania 4.4
Western Sahara 4.3
Mayotte 4.2
Jordan 3.8
Djibouti 3.7
Pakistan 3.6
Tajikistan 3.4
Oman 3.3
Syria 3.2
Kyrgyzstan 3.0
Egypt 2.9
Saudi Arabia 2.9
Kazakhstan 2.7
Uzbekistan 2.7
Malaysia 2.6
Kosovo 2.5
Libya 2.5
Bangladesh 2.4
Maldives 2.4
Turkmenistan 2.4
Azerbaijan 2.3
Indonesia 2.3
Kuwait 2.3
Algeria 2.3
Morocco 2.2
Lebanon 2.1
Qatar 2.1
Tunisia 2.1
Turkey 2.1

USA 2.0

Bahrain 1.9
Iran 1.9
United Arab Emirates 1.8
Brunei 1.7
Albania 1.4

While the rates are impressively low in some countries--Iran, Turkey, and Indonesia jump out at me--Dr. Charlton is right: the picture is not as rosy as Eberstadt (the author) suggests. While Eberstadt does write that he is focusing on countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa, there are still many countries with high TFRs. Just focusing on the large countries, we could mention Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (which has 180 million people). And Eberstadt does say that, "Throughout the Ummah, fertility levels are falling dramatically." That makes it sounds like things are getting good globally, but look at those sub-Saharan numbers. Nigeria alone has 75 milllion people. With a TFR of 5.7, the country will double in size in a generation. (Nigeria's annual growth rate is 2.27 percent, so using the rule of 72, the country should double in size in  31.7 years.)

The amazing decline in Muslim fertility

According to this study, fertility in much of the Ummah--the worldwide community of followers of Islam--has fallen in the past 20 years to levels comparable to the United States. If that isn't amazing enough, the data indicate that increased use of birth control and socioeconomic development have had little to do with it. (And the article doesn't even mention abortion as an explanation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but abortion is illegal and rare in many Muslim countries.)

By contrast, the correlation between desired and actual family size is extremely high in these countries. According to the author, the revolutionary change has been due to changes in individual family size preferences. He doesn't use the world culture, but that's what I would call it when people's preferences change collectively.

This dramatic worldwide decline should reduce immigration numbers and ease the assimilation problems in the developed world.

Blacks and terrorism

According to this new Pew poll, native-born blacks Muslims are more likely to have favorable views of terrorists than other Muslims. Evidently, Islam attracts anti-American blacks and encourages their alienation. On the other hand, a low percentage of actual terrorists have been native-born blacks. This is consistent with the black tendency to talk more than act.

American Muslim religiousness

Are American Muslims more or less religious than other Americans? Here is the distribution of the total population first and Muslims second (GSS, years 2000-2008, non-blacks):

Percent attending religious services (sample size = 12,652/53)

All Americans
Never 21.6
Rarely 31.4
Sometimes 14.5
Often 29.8

Muslims
Never 22.6
Rarely 17.0
Sometimes 17.0
Often 43.4*

* significantly higher than for all Americans

Muslims differ from other Americans in the most religious category: 43 versus 30 percent attend often (almost every week or more).

Religiosity and liking Muslims

Using GSS data, I showed that religious Christians like Jews more than their irreligious counterparts.  Next, I want to see how religiosity is related to warmth toward Muslims. Here are the correlations:

Pearson correlations

White Protestants -.05
White Catholics -.03
Jews -.86 (n = 8)
Black Protestants -.13

Religiosity is either unrelated to liking Muslims, or it predicts dislike.


Means 

White Protestants 45.7
White Catholics 51.5
Jews 21.9
Black Protesants 52.7

Not surprisingly, Muslims get lower warmth scores than other groups, especially from Jews.

Religion and politics among Western Muslims

Among Muslims living in the West, does an interest in politics go hand-in-hand with religious commitment?

Using World Values Survey data, I put together a sample of 120 Muslims living in Western countries. They were asked about frequency of religious attendance and "how important is politics in your life?" Of those who attend at least weekly, 46.9% say politics is very or rather important. The corresponding number for those who never or practically never go is 26.9%.

So for Muslims in the West, religion and politics tend to go together. 

On the other hand, there is a similar tendency among Americans in general. Of those who attend at least weekly, 59.4% say politics is important, compared to 41.3% who never attend. (Notice also how Americans as a group are more interested in politics than Western Muslims.) 

Almost half of Muslims say terrorism may be justified

World Values Survey respondents in 13 European countries and the United States were asked the following question: "Terrorism is everyday news. In principle, most people are against it, but there is still room for differences of opinion. Which of these two statements do you tend to agree with?  A) There may be certain circumstances where terrorism is justified; B) Terrorism for whatever motive must always be condemned."

Of those who answered the question, here are the percentages who responded "A" by religion:

Percent saying terrorism may be justified (sample size = 14,566) 

Muslims 46.2
Hindu 26.3
Jewish 16.6
Protestant 15.3

Total sample 14.9

Catholic 14.7
Non-denominational 12.5
Other 11.1

Almost half of Muslims feel that terrorism can be acceptable--a rate that is more than three times that of the total sample. Sympathy for terrorists appears to be common among Muslims living in Western countries. (Warning: there are only 21 Muslims in the sample).

Projections

This study I linked to in the last post is interesting. Based on trends in fertility, immigration, secularization, conversions, and religious fundamentalism, the authors project that the modal American voter 30 years from now will describe himself as a conservative Democrat. (Of course, the large projected growth in Catholic Hispanics contributes significantly to such a conclusion). The authors also estimate that in the U.S. the total number of Muslims will surpass Jews in a decade or so.   

Of all Americans, Muslims have the most kids

The table is from this research article.

Jews like Muslims more than Muslims do

The World Values Survey asked people all around the world the following question: "On this list are various groups of people, could you please sort out any that you would not like to have as neighbors?" It was a long list of many religions and ethnic groups. Here are the percentages by religion who mentioned that they did not want to live next to Muslims (sample size = 102,674):


Percent mentioning Muslims

Hindu 31.8
Buddhist 28.6
Ancestral religion 25.0
Orthodox 24.1
Jain 21.6
Independent African Church 21.3
Seventh Day Adventist 21.3
Pentecostal 19.5

World 19.3

Protestant 18.8
Roman Catholic 18.0
Evangelical 17.0
Born-Again 15.9
Muslim 15.6
Jew 15.1
C&S Celestial 15.0
Other 14.9
Non-denominational 14.0
Church of Sweden 13.6
Jehovah's Witness 13.5
Independent Church 11.9
Mormon 9.9
Baptist 8.4

Do I detect a tendency for those who intereact with more Muslims to be less in favor of living by them? If so, that goes against the PC doctrine that to know the other is to love the other.

This is further confirmed by the fact that nine religions -- one of them being Jews -- like Muslims more than Muslims do. Amazing.

Do Muslims differ from other Americans on gender-and-politics questions?

Sample size = 25,284


This GSS graph shows the percent of Americans separated by religion who would vote for a female for President. You can see the Muslims are not out of the mainstream (there are 16 Muslim respondents). Thirteen percent of them say no compared to 14 percent of all Americans. Muslims are a young population, and younger people have more modern views of gender roles.  

Sample size = 26,970


People were also asked if they agreed with, "Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women." (In other words, are men better liars). Muslims are more somewhat more traditional on  this question: 40 percent of them agree compared to 31 percent of all Americans. (There are 47 Muslims in this sample.)

American Muslims

From the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture: 

In this essay the author gives an historical overview of Islam in America from its earliest beginnings in pre-Columbia America until the present. Details on the origins, growth and spread of the three largest American Muslim groups - African American, Arab and South Asian - are explored as are the tensions and frictions between the three communities, which undermine the unity of these adherents and their potential influence on the United States' domestic and foreign policies. Also explored are the ideological struggles some Muslims - perhaps a large percentage in the three groups - have regarding their position in the American mosaic. Are they “Muslims in America” or are they “American Muslims?” Some African Americans, many of whom have adopted Islam and the “new” identity it provides as an antidote to this group's long history of ostracism and marginalization, are alienated from any wholesale embrace of their American heritage and identity. Among Arab and South Asian Muslims, some feel a loyalty to their homelands and are often opposed to U. S. policies related to them. Others see the U.S. as morally bankrupt and beyond redemption and are therefore unwilling to totally embrace an American identity. Post 9-11 events in the U.S. in which Muslims with immigrant backgrounds have been targeted have further alienated those who already had their doubts and pushed others who were on the fence into the camp of those who see no real place for Muslims in the American body politic. Lastly, the author lays out her views on how all three Muslim communities can find ways to unite internally and why it is to their advantage to fully embrace their American identity and citizenship in order to influence her future policies, both domestic and international.

So Muslims as a group are alienated from America's heritage; they think she is morally bankrupt and beyond redemption; they are more worried about the Old Country's welfare than American interests; and so they do not fully identify as Americans. But the author thinks they should, not out of affection, but as a means to make America more pro-Islam. I, for one, am reassured by this essay.