Dean Esmay Explores Freedom and Islam
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Religion, The War On Terrorism, The WorldInteresting stuff:
Political scientists have for years gathered data to measure how free and democratic the nations of the world are. The two most common data sets are Polity and Freedom House. Of those two, the most readily accessible and easy to work with is Freedom House. Since 1972 they have been publishing annual reports on freedom in every country and significant territory on the world, measuring them on civil and political freedoms and using the same basic criteria from year to year. Their ratings on civil and political freedoms work on a scale of 1-7, with 1 being most free and 7 being least free. The numbers on each country represent civil and political freedoms. A combined average rating of 2.5 or better earns a country a “free” rating, and that country is counted as a liberal democracy. A combined average rating of between 3 and 5.5 is “partly free” and is counted as an electoral democracy, much akin to America or the United Kingdom in the 19th century.
And Dean sums up the results perfectly.
This is not to say that the Islamic world doesn’t have a problem. It does. Any religion dominated by Saudi Arabia and Iran most certainly has a problem. But this is a problem that muslims, and the entire world, need to address. We’re fools if we just shrug and say, “well, that’s muslims for you” whenever human rights are trampled and human lives wasted.
See the results for yourself over at Dean’s World.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 and is filed under Religion, The War On Terrorism, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 15th, 2005 at 8:24 am
I’ve never thought Muslims were incapable of democracy, I supported the war because I hoped to see a free nation replace the tyranny of Iraq. That having been said, if you average the ten largest Muslim national populations you come up with about a 4.5 on the 7 point scale where 1 point would be Denmark and 7 points is North Korea. When you remove India (which is not Muslim dominated) from the equation, the number worsens. Indonesia, Turkey and Nigeria make up the balance of the more positive side of the statistics.
If you look at middle eastern Muslim nations you get a very different picture. Or if you look at Arab Muslim nations. As Dean points out, no one is saying there isn’t a problem. Obviously some Muslim-dominated nations have acheived a degree of freedom. But most have not, and none in the Arab world or the middle-east. Unfortunately, Iraq is in that neighborhood, not in southeast Asia or adjacent to Europe. Iraq is in the center of what amounts to a black hole of freedom.
This raises concerns. It also raises the potential rewards if the Iraq project succeeds.