Problems Within Islam

While everyone here knows about the rising tide of Islamophobia in the West, especially those with a huge influx of refugees, and while I hope everyone here understands that there is no justification to discriminate against, deport, ban, or otherwise single out Muslims on an institutional level, those same Muslims that we defend are definitely not all saints, and in fact in some cases do indeed have some problems within their communities disproportionate to their numbers.

While it is true that 94% of terrorist attacks carried out from 1980 to now has been carried out by non-Muslims, Muslims make up only 1% of the US population, which means they are 6 times more likely to commit acts of terrorism than the general population.

And this is in the US. American Muslims are generally considered to be more integrated than Muslims elsewhere. In Europe, there is a much darker picture. In Denmark, Lebanese and Palestinian immigrants have the highest rate of crime out of all groups, and Turkish, Moroccan, Somalian, and Pakistani immigrants are not far behind. In France, the prisons are disproportionately filled with men of North African descent. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#Europe). While a large part of that is because immigrants tend to be younger and have lower socioeconomic status, it is a key factor in why right-wing nationalist politics has taken hold to a great extent in many European countries.

Then you get to the Muslims in the Middle East. In that part of the world, attitudes held by the Muslim majority can become extremely nasty and damaging.

Muslims in most Middle Eastern countries have extremely backwards views on women. They also have extremely backwards views on abortion, homosexuality, and in some countries, do not approve of divorce. A significant minority condones honor killings as acceptable. In most countries with a Muslim majority, the majority of the population favors the imposition of Sharia law. Over half of Muslims under 65 surveyed by the ADL (so perhaps take with a grain of salt?) believe that the Holocaust is greatly exaggerated, and 10% deny it completely.

Of course, you will find similar problems with any country with a dominant religion without secular institutions, but it does lend credence to the idea that just like how Christianity has been widely used for the purposes of oppression and evil, Islam has too, and to a deadly extent that is more remniscent of Medieval Europe than the modern day.

So this leads me to a broader question: what will it take for Islam to evolve? Is it economic development? Modernization? Exposure to Western values? Because as of now, while the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists or even sympathize with terrorists, a majority of them are the equivalent of the Christian fundamentalists we see in the States, and a significant minority approves of the use of violence to enforce those puritanical social norms.