Immigration Advisory

In this post I expand my last one, and take Freedom House rankings of civil liberties/political rights in every country in the world, and correlate those rankings with the percentage of a country's population that is Muslim. (Recall that the best possible Freedom House ranking is "1" for civil liberties and "1" for political rights, for a total score of "2". Costa Rica, Germany, Taiwan, the U.S. and Canada are examples of nations that earned a "2" ranking. The worst possible ranking is 7 for civil liberties and 7 for political rights, for a total of 14. Saudi Arabia and Syria are examples of countries ranked "14".)

For 2005, here is the inverse relation I found between Muslim population percentages and civil liberties/political rights:

23 nations in the world had populations that were 91%-100% Muslim. These nations earned an average Freedom House ranking of 10.4 for civil liberties and political rights.

13 nations had populations that were 71-90% Muslim. These nations earned an average Freedom House ranking of 9.6.

8 nations had populations that were 51-70% Muslim. These nations earned an average ranking of 9.3

14 nations had populations that were 20-50% Muslim. These nations earned an average ranking of 8.4.

The world's remaining 130 or so nations had populations that were 0% to 19% Muslim, and earned an average Freedom House ranking of 5.1.

So the 2005 period covered by the 2006 Freedom House report shows that the lower the percentage of Muslims in a country, the better off that country tended to be in terms of civil liberties/political rights.

As I mentioned in my last post, there are a few exceptions to that overall pattern, like Mali. Mali is 90% Muslim, but was given a "4" ranking, which is sufficiently good to put Mali in Freedom House's "free country" category. Now if only Mali could export whatever it's got that Syria ain't got.