Much has been written in the UK over the past year highlighting the disproportionate representation of Muslims in the prison population; moreover, the deeply worrying phenomenon of
Muslim gangs targeting inmates for conversion has been brought to light. According to the
Labour Market Survey the UK had a Muslim population of a little over 2.4 million in 2008 out of a total population of
61.4 million, some 3.9% of the total. However, in that same year some
12% of the prison population of England and Wales was recorded as being Muslim.
Although these figures demonstrate the statistically higher frequency of criminality amongst the Muslim population in England and Wales, data from elsewhere is even more startling. A report in the
Washington Post from 2008 stated:
Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim. In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found.
These figures are bad, but they pale in comparison with those encountered within the French penal system:
As a matter of policy, the French government does not collect data on race, religion or ethnicity on its citizens in any capacity, making it difficult to obtain precise figures on the makeup of prison populations. But demographers, sociologists and Muslim leaders have compiled generally accepted estimates showing Muslim inmate populations nationwide averaging between 60 and 70 percent.
Bivouac-ID notes that more conservative estimates of the French Muslim prison population still place it at in excess of 50% of the total. As in the UK, French prisoners are targeted for conversion to Islam, with an estimated 400 Islamists proselytising within the French prison system in 2008. The current French population is estimated at 65.4 million with some 5 million French citizens being Muslim (7.6%). Neighbouring Switzerland too has a significant overrepresentation of Muslims within the prison system. For example, the overcrowded Champ Dollon Prison in Geneva reported that in 2009,
56.6% of its inmates were Muslim.
Clearly, there is a problem of Muslim criminality which manifests itself across the societies of Western Europe which have admitted a significant influx of Muslim immigrants. A small part of this disproportionate representation will arise from the fact that the Muslim populations are younger than those of the host societies’ average owing to the higher Muslim fertility rate. In the UK for example, there were an
estimated 301,000 Muslims under the age of 4 in September 2008. We should therefore expect the bulge in the Muslim criminal population to grow even further in the years ahead.
Having provided a brief sketch of the size of Muslim prison populations in a number of European states, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to what these statistics demonstrate. Do they illustrate the innate ‘racism’ of the host societies and the alleged relative economic deprivation of Muslim populations as the official explanations would have you believe; or, is it the case that they demonstrate the innate incompatibility of Islam with our societies and the contempt of doctrinaire Muslims for the
kuffar?
