Alarm Warranted Over Muslim Poll? Perhaps.
By Gerry Daly Posted in User Blogs — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Yesterday, National Review's Stanley Kurtz linked to this article in The Telegraph about a YouGov survey of British Muslims. The lede paragraph:
The group portrait of British Muslims painted by YouGov's survey for The Daily Telegraph is at once reassuring and disturbing, in some ways even alarming.
[Read on below the fold...]
The article continues:
The vast majority of British Muslims condemn the London bombings but a substantial minority are clearly alienated from modern British society and some are prepared to justify terrorist acts...
Most Muslims are evidently moderate and law-abiding but by no means all are...
As the figures in the chart show, 88 per cent of British Muslims clearly have no intention of trying to justify the bus and Tube murders.
However, six per cent insist that the bombings were, on the contrary, fully justified.
Six per cent may seem a small proportion but in absolute numbers it amounts to about 100,000 individuals who, if not prepared to carry out terrorist acts, are ready to support those who do.
Moreover, the proportion of YouGov's respondents who, while not condoning the London attacks, have some sympathy with the feelings and motives of those who carried them out is considerably larger - 24 per cent.
A substantial majority, 56 per cent, say that, whether or not they sympathise with the bombers, they can at least understand why some people might want to behave in this way.
YouGov also asked whether or not its Muslim respondents agreed or disagreed with Tony Blair's description of the ideas and ideology of the London bombers as "perverted and poisonous".
Again, while a large majority, 58 per cent, agree with him, a substantial minority, 26 per cent, are reluctant to be so dismissive.
Jonah Goldberg, who incidentally is hated by Wonkette Ana Marie Cox (I assume it is because he's a lesbian), suggests the problem may be even worse than the poll suggests:
What the story doesn't mention is the possibility of under-polling. Presumably people who declined to answer or people who shaved their responses did so in order to downplay or conceal their sympathies. I suppose it's possible that some folks felt pressure from family members to sound more militant thant they are, but I'd have to guess this poll underestimates the problem.
Certainly a possibility.
That said, while I am completely on board with the idea that the poll is a reason for concern, I am not convinced it shows a demonstrable problem with British Muslims not present in other factions of English society.
For example, would George Galloway say the bombings were at least partially justified? Would he say he has sympathy with the feelings and motices of those who carried them out? Would he say that he can understand how some people might want to behave that way? Would he be reluctant to be dismissive of the ideas and ideologies of the London bombers? Would he think that Blair needed to be more sensitive and less hawkish?
I think that for many of these questions, Galloway would have answered in accord with the 'alarming' results of the survey. And it should come as no surprise that there are people in the public even further to the left than the political darlings of the left.
What I really would have liked to have seen was a survey that asked of British Muslims all of the questions asked here, but also asked a sample of all British citizens the same questions, so we could compare and see if there was a marked difference.
I suspect, just from looking at the percentages, that the answer is probably not in many of the questions (although in a few, particular with agreement of the "perverted and poisonous" line I bet they are). It does not shock me that 6 percent of British Muslims think the bombings were fully justified. It would not shock me, however, to find out that 3-6% of all Britons think the same.
And that's an even bigger problem.
It is just conjecture, however. But it does highlight the biggest problem with this survey-- it does not give us a reference point against which to compare the results.
With regard to the 3-6% of British Muslims in the poll who think the recent London Jihad attacks were OK, if they can be identified, then they should be deported.
But you do raise an interesting question of what about the percentage of non-Muslim British who approve of the attacks. There probably are some. So isn't the developing policy of deporting radical islamists discriminatory against muslims because we will not be deporting jihad supporting non-muslims? I don't have an answer.
Dog bites man.
Stranger than fiction.