Islam, modernization and crime: A test of the religious ecology thesis

Using a United Nations (United Nations, 1977) cross-national data set on offender and offense rates for a variety of crimes, this article qualifies recent research into religiosity by investigating the relationship between Islamic religion, economic development, and crime rates. Considerable research has demonstrated a positive correlation between economic development (often defined as modernization) and crime. Other research has suggested that religion is an impedence to crime, although the results are a little less clear. No previous studies have examined the relationship between the Islamic religion and crime. Results suggest that, when level of economic development is held constant, Islamic countries do not differ significantly in crime rates compared to nonIslamic countries.