Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Religious crime in the West

A while ago I posted this article, "Young Muslim women forced to suicide". It is about a hidden aspect of the so called honor killings. At the time I tried to find some hard numbers to back up the article.

But in most countries the numbers are conveniently not available or it is illegal (France) or quasi-illegal (Sweden) to publish them.

However, I did find some, but now a new article, "20 religious crimes pr. month", in Jyllandsposten, the famous Danish newspaper of the cartoons, brings more light to the matter. The Danish Minister of Justice has demanded that the police keep statistics.
The police has reported (to the ministry) 100 crimes (since June), which are thought to be related to concepts of honor or religious motives. Mysterious suicides must be treated as investigations into killings.

In Denmark, according to the police, every week four crimes are committed which are related to cultural norms and/or religious concepts of honor.

Let’s first get some facts straight. We are not talking about Danish Christian fundamentalist fanatics crucifying gays. Neither are we talking about Buddhists beating up their wives. We are definitely not talking about the nuns of my old Catholic school beating up kids.

Insofar as I know - we are talking only about Muslims. And mostly about families punishing young daughters. In extreme cases by killing them.

These are hard numbers. Four reported crimes per week. Not all reported crimes will turn out to be actual crimes. But not all crimes will have been reported either. Especially will all the disappeared girls not count. Those are girls born and brought up in Denmark, but who one day simply disappear. According to family they stayed on in their parent’s country after a vacation. What happens to them is anybody's guess.

So let us treat the number of four crimes per week as actual crimes. Denmark neither has a particularly large nor small Muslim population compared to other European countries. Neither is crime particularly worse or better than in other countries in Europe. So let us try to extrapolate (all numbers are rough estimates).

4 crimes per week correspond to 200 crimes per year

Denmark has a population of 5.000.000. In other words 40 crimes per million per year. (Denmark has a population of roughly 5 percent Muslims. So we are talking roughly 1 crime per year per 1000 Muslims)

That is more or less 14.000 crimes per year in all Europe (350.000.000 people).

Considering a world wide Western population of roughly 700.000.000 we may talk 28.000 crimes per year.

In the West.

By people right out of the middle ages.

I am appalled to the point of my blood boiling.

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