Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Germany: Religious Muslim boys more violent, study says

A study of 45,000 teenagers (14, 15 and 16 year olds) in Germany has found that boys growing up in religious Muslim families are more likely to be violent. The study, conducted by Christian Pfeiffer of the criminal research institute of Lower Saxony, took into account the level of education, standard of living in the families, how religious the teenagers considered themselves, and how integrated they felt in Germany.

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 just as likely to be violent as non-Muslim girls.

...

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.

TheI selected quotes above from the article gave factual information about the study. Much of what I edited out were the efforts of the researcher to report his results without being labeled a bigot.

1 comment:

Andy said...

I lived in Lower-Saxony (Hessisch-Oldendorf) from 1984-1987 while serving with the USAF, and witnessed this first hand. While there seemed to be a cold detente between the Americans and the Turks (perhaps as we were both foreigners), there was a very real antipathy between the Turks and the Germans. This would regularly boil over into at least one brawl per Saturday night.