Saturday 24 April 2010

The Sliding Scale of Islam

James Higham has correlated the number of Muslims in a country (as a percentage) with their impact on society. Scroll about a third of the way down this post.

Draw your own conclusions, but it seems to me that the 'tipping point' may be as low as four or five per cent.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not trying to be annoying, but if France's Muslim population is around 10%, yet they can propose a Burhka (sp?) ban, doesn't it suggest the tipping point might be a bit higher?

AAssuming a) I've understood what you mean by tipping poing, and b) that there is one at all

Mark Wadsworth said...

HH, like I said, draw your own conclusions.

AIH, the Burka Ban is more likely to go ahead in Belgium (6% Muslim).

It's also an interesting maths chicken and egg - if you only have 1% Muslims, then the other 99% probably aren't too fussed what they get up to. So OT1H the likelihood of popular support (among non-Muslims) for a ban is proportional to the size of the Muslim population; but OTOH the likelihood of the ban becoming law is inversely proportional to the size of the Muslim population.

The tipping point (in this case, and assuming there is one) is where there are enough Muslims to get people's backs up enough to actually call for a ban (however daft such a ban may be) but too many Muslims for a ban to have a chance of succeeding.

James Higham said...

It was something I found in my researches and seemed not a bad rule of thumb. Re the burqa ban - proposed is one thing .......

Nick Drew said...

but before addressing 'purpose' (part 2 of James' analysis), you surely need to look at what happens with other minorities as they advance through 1%, 4%, 10% etc

(if there are sufficient other such instances to examine)

then you can normalise for 'number', the first effect he discusses and try to single out 'purpose'

whether the conclusion would change I don't know

Mark Wadsworth said...

ND, I think that's the point.

There are loads of other examples of countries being divided along racial, religious or national lines - for example within Belgium or indeed the UK, Northern Ireland, South Tyrol, Germany - half Catholic, half Protestant - or South Africa black/white or parts of the USA Hispanic/white or black/white etc - and nowhere do you such find a 'tipping point'.

For sure there are tensions and groups fighting for a larger share of the cake - e.g. the SNP or Plaid Cymru - but no other groups trying to completely re-write the rules of society. Not even yer metaphorical gun-totin' black drug dealers on a council estate in Peckham - they might be happy kill individuals mainly for bravado, but that's not quite the same as what the Islamists want.

James Higham said...

Nick has a statistical point but it is certainly a low percentage needed for Muslim unrest - observe the troubles in France, with 8%.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, sorry to have hijacked your thread, but I don't think ND has undermined your premise that with Islamists there is a 'tipping point' that is not observable with any other racial, religious or national sub-group.

For example, some US cities are majority black or majority Hispanic or even majority gay/lesbian, and they all do their special pleading*, but none of them wish to secede from the Union or anything.

* I'm not disputing that such groups might have legitimate grievances, even though I'd fall far short of indulging in across-the-board Victimhood Poker.

AntiCitizenOne said...

Did someone mention Belgium?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/22/belgium-government-brought-down-language-liberals