It appears yet again that the more observant and devout one is in Islam, the more likely one is to Misunderstand the Religion of Peace. “A new German study shows that boys growing up in pious Muslim families are more likely to be violent,” from the National Secular Society via Muslims Debate, n.d. (thanks to F.P.):
A new German study shows that boys growing up in pious Muslim families are more likely to be violent.
The study, which involved intensive questioning of 45,000 teenagers from 61 towns and regions across the country, was conducted by Christian Pfeiffer of the criminal research institute of Lower Saxony.
Pfeiffer was quick to assure the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that he was not a racist or ‘Islamophobe’ and that, in fact, he had been dismayed by the results of the survey….
News flash, Pfeiffer: there are few, if any, actual “Islamophobes,” and this caveat will not prevent you from being labeled one. Those who are called “Islamophobes” are those who have studied the texts and teachings of Islam and how those texts and teachings are applied in Islamic societies and among Muslims in the West. Often many of these “Islamophobes” were dismayed by what they were seeing.
[…] Pfeiffer said that even when other social factors were taken into account, there remained a significant correlation between religiosity and readiness to use violence. There were some positive correlations too he said, noting that young religious Muslims were much less likely than their non-Muslim counterparts to drink alcohol – or to steal from shops. The increased likelihood to use violence was restricted to Muslim boys, Pfeiffer said – Muslim girls were only as likely to be violent as non-Muslim girls.
This led him to conclude that there was not a direct link between Islamic belief and violence – but an indirect one. He pointed to Christian teachings which justified domestic violence and male dominance of society for a long time.
Pfeiffer runs completely off-course here. He doesn’t appear to understand that Islam not only contains teachings that justify violence, but also teachings that relegate women to second-class status. And his moral equivalence, given the absence of Christian terror groups around the world, just politically correct attitudinizing.
His researchers asked the teenagers a range of questions about their ideas of manliness, for example whether they thought a man was justified in hitting his wife if she had been unfaithful. They also asked about what media and computer game violence they were exposed to, as well as whether their friends were involved in crime or violence.
The results showed that Muslim boys from immigrant families were more than twice as likely to agree with macho statements than boys from Christian immigrant families. The rate was highest among those considered as very religious, Pfeiffer said. They were also more likely to be using violent computer games and have criminal friends.
Added to that, the more religious Muslim boys felt the least integrated into German society, with only 14.5 percent of the very religious Turkish boys (the largest group of Muslims in the study) saying they felt German, although 88.5 percent had been born there.
Pfeiffer said he thought the responsibility for the macho culture lay with Imams in Germany, who he said usually come from abroad and often cannot speak German or have much understanding of the culture. “We have to prevent attempts at integration from being destroyed by Imams who preach Turkish provincial stories and a reactionary male image,” said Pfeiffer. He concluded that Germans should reconsider how they treat Muslims, noting that there had been a damaging loss of trust since the September 11 attacks in 2001….