Many public intellectuals and political movements in the West consider the popular embrace of religious belief—particularly Islam—to increase the risk of suffering oppression in one’s country. However, a new set of psychology studies provides convincing evidence that this view is a misleading oversimplification. According to the lead researcher, “Religion and oppression go together like ice cream sales and street violence, or like cows and Republicans. To figure out how much one causes the other, if at all, you have to take other related things into account. And Islam is nowhere close to being the most oppressive cultural system in the world. When comparing Muslim-majority countries to countries with a similar degree of development, their levels of oppression are about average.”