German study claims devout Islamic youth more violence-prone

Berlin - The more devout a young Muslim male in Germany is, the more likely he is to resort to violence, according to a federally financed study seen Saturday by the German Press Agency dpa.
The study, based on interviews with 45,000 boys and girls aged 14 to 16, also concluded that male supremacist views and a preference for violent videos and computer games link closely with mosque attendance among the young. It compared Christians and Muslims.
The as-yet-unpublished research was jointly conducted by the federal Interior Ministry and the KFN criminology research institute in Hanover headed by Christian Pfeiffer. Dpa obtained a copy in Berlin.
In a conclusion, the authors said the finding might be explained by hypotheses of Rauf Ceylan, an ethnic Turkish scholar in German who studies religion.
They said Ceylan had discovered that a majority of mosque clergy in Germany encouraged their congregations to practice a conservative form of Islam and to preserve their ethnic roots.
More than half of German Muslims, who make up 5 per cent of the population, have Turkish roots.
The findings characterised imams or clergy as men working only temporarily in Germany with no knowledge of the German language, preventing them from developing a positive attitude to German culture or from questioning male dominance.
The study suggested those views were transferred to young people at the mosque, whereas non-devout boys picked up more liberal German attitudes. Pfeiffer wrote: 'This is not a problem with Islam, but a problem with their education in Islam.'
Contacted for comment by dpa, Ceylan warned the interpretation might be simplistic and said many other factors had to be taken into account.
KFN conducted interviews in 2007 and 2008 in 61 cities with the aim of detecting how religious belief influences attitudes and behaviour. It found that young people who were intensely Christian were less likely to be violent than the average.
The study also argued that agnostic migrant children were the fastest to integrate, readily considering themselves as German and aiming for the highest educational achievements. By contrast, only 16 per cent of young Muslims aimed for the highest school-completion certificate.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/n...aims-devout-Islamic-youth-more-violence-prone

 

I don't know. Both do not have to starve, though, and they all have access to the same, free education in public schools (and universities, if they choose to follow that path). There are hardly any private "elite" schools and universities in Germany, almost the whole system is public.

As far as I understood - the answers to the interview questions that were asked.

I don't think they defined "devout". The German article I read about this said that the interviewees had multiple choice - like answers to check to describe how strongly they felt about their religion (I guess something like "I was born into it but I don't really care much", "I pray sometimes", "I go to my church/mosque/synagogue regularly", "....").

I don't think there are any big implications. Maybe an increased awareness for offering more education and integrative offerings. I don't know.

 

How can you come to this conclusion? They simply cross-matched the degree of proneness to violence displayed in certain answers with the replies to the questions of how strong the religious convictions are.

Result:

The more devout the christians were, the less prone to violence.
The more devout the muslims were, the more prone to violence.

You remind me of these guys:

 

These might be factors, but they were comparing children in the same classes. Why make up excuses? There seems to be something inherent in what is taught by Muslim clerics in Germany which riles up people, especially young males. The more they are exposed to it, the more prone to violence they are.

 

How can you fix that? There is freedom of religion in Germany. It is basically impossible to control or police what a preacher preaches. If the Muslim clerics preach hate more than let's say Christian clerics, what can you do? Perhaps refuse known hate preachers entry into the country, I guess? How do you suggest that would be fixed?

 

No, that's not what I assume. But as we have heard from many Muslim posters on the board, there are many different brands of Islam out there. Apparently, for whatever reason, the more violent brand gets preached quite a bit in Germany by "traveling preachers" (mostly from Turkey, apparently). I don't know what could be done to fix that.

Yes, this was a terrible case in East Germany which made me very sad. I'm recounting it from memory: Marwa El-Sherbini, a young pregnant Muslim lady was with her child on a playground and some German guy, himself an immigrant from Russia, was sitting on the swings. She asked him politely if he could let her child use the swings. He started using profanity and threatened her and made racist and islamophobic remarks. She did exactly the right thing and called the authorities and they pursued it and there was a court case. In court, she was testifying and suddenly the guy jumped up and started stabbing her. Her husband tried to help her, but got stabbed himself. In the same moment, a police officer who got alerted ran into the room and saw the two men wrestling for the knife and unfortunately shot the wrong guy (the husband), apparently as he was holding the knife that moment and the police officer confused him as the attacker. The lady died from her wounds later.

It is a very sad case, and there have been a lot of displays of solidarity by German citizens with the poor lady. Leading German politicians and representatives of other religions joined in, condemning the act.





They seemed like such a loving couple, and actually a positive example of integration (even though they were not aspiring to be German citizens, I think they were happy to be studying in Germany and they did everything right, going to the authorities, etc., not at fault in this case at all). As I said, I think it is a very, very sad case and I feel very sorry for the nice young lady and her husband. But it was committed by a single perpetrator, a complete idiot, an unemployed loser with no friends who somehow projected all his misery on foreigners/people of other races, and specifically muslims (ironically he was an immigrant himself). I have to say that the reaction of the German people and the outrage over what happened and the solidarity with the young lady and her husband made me more proud than embarrassed. If it was my decision, the murderer should never get out of jail again.

 

You are not very intelligent.