Daniel Pipes on Muslim social backwardness, 25.12.2006

Submitted by Ian Mordant (United Kingdom), Dec 25, 2006 at 19:22

In comparing muslims with other groups, one obviously must compare like with like. Now there is no current Muslim equivalent to the subset of Christians in North America and Europe who are also very affluent. So that must push down Muslim averages if compared to the rest of the world.

But I wonder whether amongst the 57 countries that comprise the Organisation of the Islamic Conference that the Muslims of those countries are below the averages for Africa and Asia say? The answer is not obvious to me.

Certainly I can believe the numbers quoted by Dr Pipes for the Uk and India, but in the UK especially, the figues are for recent immigrants, and raise a whole host of questions. The data for India is more rigorous, and although India's Muslim population do lag, its not by that much. The schooling figures are utterly appalling, even for Hindus, especially the school-completing rates.

Dr Pipes's conclusion may be right, comparing the world's 1.4 billion Muslims with world averages, but compared to Africa and Asia, which partly for the above reasons seem to me more fair, they do not obviously lag that much, or perhaps at all.

So we need some more detail for the argument to acquire necessary rigour.

Ian Mordant

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