we often hear in the media in America oh
my Muslims watch out uh terrorists uh
their religion is not like the other
religion a religion of Peace of course
not don't be ridiculous right I mean
these guys are far more inclined towards
violence than other religions well
that's interesting UC Berkeley a
political scientist M step fish decid
hey you know what why don't I check that
out see if that's true now there's a lot
of different ways that you can judge
this and there's different metrics you
can use but he thought why not look at
the murder rates in Muslim countries and
non-muslim countries and see how they
relate I mean if there's something
intrinsic to the religion of Islam that
leads to violence it might not just show
itself in terms of terrorism or Wars and
remember it's not like the Muslims
started the war in Iraq we started the
war in Iraq right and then a lot of
violence broke out but murder is a
different category it's you know
intentional homicide and it's judged
based on crime statistics so let's check
that out okay I thought that's an
interesting idea so he explains
predominantly Muslim countries average
2.4 murders perom per 100,000 people
compared to 7.5 in non-muslim countries
what the percentage of the society that
is made up of Muslims is an
extraordinarily good predictor of a
country's murder
rate so get a load of this more Muslims
equals less m
uh Republicans conservatives all you
everybody in the media go ahead this is
the time when your head
explodes and not due to
Muslims no way man I don't believe it a
fact suck I no way I read a poll that
they they like to have the the women's
heads covered no no yeah okay that's all
interesting right but these are the
numbers you can go check them yourself
okay so the non-muslim countries have
murder rates
three times higher so now I know what a
lot of smart people are thinking wait a
minute now there's a lot of different
factors that go into that you're right
so let's just read up on the rest of the
context of this and then we'll talk
about it he says more authorit
authoritarianism in Muslim countries
does not account for the difference I
have found that controlling for
political regime and statistical
analysis does not change the findings
more Muslims less homicide so because if
I I would have thought the same thing
hey look a lot of these countries
unfortunately are under authoritarian
leadership and now if you got a guy uh
who's a dictator and who's going to you
know have severe consequences for you if
there's a crime maybe that affects the
numbers but he controlled for that and
he found that it does not affect the
numbers okay um how about uh if you took
out some of the Troublesome Christian
countries there are countries by the way
when they're Troublesome they're not
called Christian countries there are
countries that happen to be Christian
right but there's huge murder rates in
some of those countries so he thought of
that he said fish further fleshed out uh
these findings for example by rerunning
the numbers to exclude non-muslim
majority states with extraordinarily
High murder rates Colombia El Salvador
Guatemala Honduras Jamaica loso South
Africa and Venezuela countries with lots
of Muslims were still less murder prone
by a pretty large margin okay now do I
believe that
there is something inherent in Muslim
people that makes them less violent than
other Homo
sapiens of course not that argument is
as absurd as saying that Muslims are
inherently more violent no they're human
beings they're exactly the same as the
rest of us now could there be something
uh that is in their culture the
socioeconomic conditions political
context that's making the difference yes
now that's exactly what I say also about
terrorism that it might have something
to do with the political context the
socioeconomic conditions Etc and all
that should be studied further okay but
the idea that Muslims are inherently
more violent in general is
counterfactual it is the opposite of
true okay so now again it's not to say
that Muslims are lovely people who float
up on clouds and who have a different
makeup than we do okay and who would
never do anything wrong of course
there's still murders it's not at the
same rate and there's got to be other
explanations for it but the idea that
Muslims are more violent is just not
only irrational but just simply not true
it does not comport with the facts as we
have them so for all of you guys who
wanted to consider the Muslims are the
worst of the worst I guess that's a sad
day for you you'll have to go find
another group to single out and go no no
no but those are the really really bad
guys