Discussion and Conclusions of This Study in the Context of the Empirical Results Obtained

Abstract

We have emphasised in this chapter that our findings do not fit into any simple political template of thinking that has existed for many years on the topic of “Islam” and “migration”. Our findings show that surveys authoritatively designed by Arab social science clearly measure “political Islam”, but that the phenomenon is less pronounced in the population that says it wants to emigrate to the West than in the Arab population as a whole. We have also clearly pointed out that the RMPE cannot be separated from the climate of lawlessness that many observers unfortunately now see rampant, especially in Western industrialised countries, and secondly, that the drivers of the key variables of the RMPE are rooted in such patterns of thought and values as the demand for a redistributive state, the apolitical young generation, the rejection of the neoliberal market economy, corruption and lawlessness as well as racism and xenophobia. The best blockades against the RMPE are feminism and secularism. An honest examination of the phenomenon of RMPE will also not be able to ignore the fact that especially in Catholic countries, where the decay of traditional values is progressing particularly fast, not only the acceptance of corruption but also of political violence is on the rise again. This problem also arises in countries with a confessional orientation towards Eastern religions. The rejection of free-market competition (competition is harmful) is also clearly linked to a higher acceptance of political violence, according to the World Values Survey. The results of our study on political Islam in the Arab world certainly also have some very shocking aspects that cannot simply be swept under the carpet. Weighted by population, the Arab Barometer data show that more than 70% of Arabs have a (sympathetic) understanding of the anti-American terror that culminated in 9/11 in Manhattan. More than 44% of Arabs favour Sharia with corporal punishment, more than 37% want the rights of non-Muslims in society to be less than those of Muslims, and more than 34% also want Sharia to restrict the rights of women. We finally highlight that following the late Harvard economist Alberto Alesina (1957–2020), social trust is an essential general production factor of any social order, and the institutions of national security of the democratic West would do well to make good use of this capital of trust that also exists among Muslims living in the West.

In the following, we would like to draw some very preliminary conclusions, if possible, for the sociopolitical debate in Europe.

6.1 Political Islam and Terrorism

Our findings do not fit into any simple political template of thinking that has existed for many years on the topic of “Islam” and “migration”. Our findings show that surveys authoritatively designed by Arab social science clearly measure “political Islam”, but that the phenomenon is less pronounced in the population that says it wants to emigrate to the West than in the Arab population as a whole. We have also clearly pointed out that the RMPE cannot be separated from the climate of lawlessness that many observers unfortunately now see rampant, especially in Western industrialised countries, and secondly, that the drivers of the key variables of the RMPE are rooted in such patterns of thought and values as the demand for a redistributive state, the apolitical young generation, the rejection of the neoliberal market economy, corruption and lawlessness, as well as racism and xenophobia. The best blockades against the RMPE are feminism and secularism.

An honest examination of the phenomenon of RMPE will also not be able to ignore the fact that especially in Catholic countries, where the decay of traditional values is progressing particularly fast, not only the acceptance of corruption but also of political violence is on the rise again. This problem also arises in countries with a confessional orientation towards Eastern religions.

The rejection of free-market competition (competition is harmful) is also clearly linked to a higher acceptance of political violence, according to the World Values Survey.

Precisely because our results are based on open, freely accessible data and a good part of the literature we use is already freely accessible via portals such as “Google Scholar” or at least easily accessible in our academic libraries, our publication is also an invitation to readers to literally “run hot” their own IT devices, laptops, tablets, even smartphones with the statistical sources and materials used here and their open-access versions. The more there is critical debate on our findings, the better. And for readers of this essay from the security agencies of the Free World, this essay offers an important warning that takes on an unfortunately strong timeliness in the face of such images as the angry crowds that tried to storm the Capitol in Washington on 6 January 2021: freedom is always threatened by politically motivated violence, and misunderstood messages from the world of religions can help to intensify that violence.

This publication thus took readers on a journey into empirical research on “political Islam” and religiously motivated political violence. On this journey, it was necessary to leave behind the rigid discussion fronts that have emerged in the West and to adjust to new and surprising insights, but also to new literature from the world’s major peer-reviewed journals.

Thus, at the end of this study, we are faced with less than satisfactory data, further complicated by the fact that the sample for Muslims in Europe included in the World Values Survey is relatively small.

As shown in the methodology chapter of this paper, this unfortunately resulted in rather unfavourable maximum ranges of variation. Thus, to the best of our knowledge and belief, we could only offer a first “keyhole perspective” of the realities for the opinions of Muslims in Europe and in other Muslim “diaspora” states, whereby we must admittedly already note that such comparative studies—based on omnibus surveys of the entire population—still have a certain validity and significance as a “second best solution” (cf. Tausch, 2010, 2019; Tausch & Karoui, 2011). Social research in the West would do well to adopt questions from the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer and the PEW Institute in Washington for samples of Muslims in the West; the same applies to Eurobarometer, in order to finally obtain reliable comparative data on the realities of the migration world. If the European Commission in Brussels in particular really takes the declarations on integration and coexistence on our continent seriously, Eurobarometer must finally start to collect a valid survey on the life perspectives of the confessional groups in Europe or—in confessionally neutral terms—all those who or whose parents were not born in the EU-27, using the questions of the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer and the PEW Institute in Washington (see below).

6.2 Open Society and Political Islam

The results of our study on political Islam in the Arab world certainly also have some very shocking aspects that cannot simply be swept under the carpet. Weighted by population, the Arab Barometer data show that more than 70% of Arabs have a (sympathetic) understanding of the anti-American terror that culminated in 9/11 in Manhattan. More than 44% of Arabs favour Sharia with corporal punishment, more than 37% want the rights of non-Muslims in society to be less than those of Muslims, and more than 34% also want Sharia to restrict the rights of women (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1

Sharia with corporal punishment in Europe? The Herculean task of changing values in the Arab world—population-weighted shares of the total Arab population that clearly support Islamist positions according to the Arab Barometer data

Electronic Appendix Table 13 provides an informed estimate of actual, realistic data on imminent immigration from the Arab world to the two EU core states of France and Germany. Interested readers will find the rationale for our cautious estimates in the footnotes to the table.

There are not millions who will come to Germany and France with an imprint of political Islam, but the numbers in the upper six figures give pause for thought.

6.3 For an Integration Policy Based on Trust in the Spirit of Harvard Professor Alberto Alesina (1957–2020)

In our study, many results were obtained, probably surprising for most, which show very openly what still needs to be done with regard to Islamist radicalism, but the author of this study does not want to conclude his text without also addressing an optimistic aspect which will mean an important field of work for the future for the work of religious communities in Europe and the rest of the West. If one follows Harvard economist Alberto Alesina, it is clear that trust in society as a whole and trust in individual institutions are essential factors of production. With Hichem Karoui, I wrote the book “Les Musulmans: un cauchemar ou une force pour l’Europe?” for the Paris publishing house L’Harmattan in 2011, and even then, we raised the question of the integration surpluses and deficits that can undoubtedly be derived from the international data on Muslims in Europe. Ten years later, I return to this question. Data from other European states point in the same direction; here it is permissible to analyse Austrian data in our freely available data appendix for the time being (https://www.academia.edu/79716351/Electronic_Appendix_Political_Islam_and_Religiously_Motivated_Political_Extremism_An_International_Comparison). There is Muslim trust in our institutions in Austria in many areas of society, and it is important to build on this trust politically in the coming years after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our study has thus briefly shown some of the challenges but also optimistic perspectives of hope associated with the topic. We refer, as earlier, to the perspectives established in Solomon (2016), Solomon and Tausch (2020a, 2020b, 2021a, 2021b), and clearly establish here, first, that there are wide gradations of support for political Islam in the Arab world, second, that—true to the research of Falco and Rotondi (2016a, 2016b)—support for political Islam among the population groups ready to migrate is lower than among the population as a whole, but that the integration tasks in the migration recipient countries will continue to be very great, also and especially with regard to the acceptance of changed gender roles and religious tolerance. Thirdly, we must also note that the rejection of political violence in broad sectors of the population in Muslim countries gives cause for hope for the future, as does the trust in the institutions of state security expressed by Muslim populations across Western countries today. One of the most surprising aspects of our research for the political debate in Western Europe is that it is not the Arab region, and certainly not the Arab region as a whole, that is to be identified with the acceptance of political violence, while Southeast Asia as well as Iraq and Spain, on the other hand, are real problem zones. The real problem cases of religiously motivated political extremism are Tajikistan, Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, Iraq, Macau SAR, Lebanon, Slovakia, Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, Bangladesh, Mexico, Chile, Ukraine, Russia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Spain, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Guatemala, Nigeria and Indonesia. Given the great trust that Muslim populations in the West have in the institutions of state security, it would be worth trying to promote existing approaches to the integration of Muslims into the security apparatuses, such as the police, the military, the judiciary, and to promote targeted integration programmes into the civil service in general.