Most non-Muslims support terrorism

[Augustus]

Have seen quite a few posts recently about passive/tacit support for terrorism among 'otherwise peaceful' Muslim populations.

What is rarely given along with such statistics is a comparable figure for non-Muslims. This basically makes the numbers irrelevant for any analytical purposes.

The line of questioning on such polls also has a massive impact, you would get very different responses to:

a) Can terrorism in defence of your religion ever be justified?
b) Do you support the killing of innocents to further your religion in any circumstances?
c) If your religion is being attacked, is terrorism against the oppressors acceptable in any circumstances?

b) will get a significantly lower response than a), and c) will get the highest response of all. The differences will not be trivial either.

Even if you look at the specific question being responded to, the answer to this question will be influenced, perhaps significantly, by the questions that have been asked before this.

For example, if you wanted to increase the number of Muslims who 'support' terrorism in your poll, you could 'prime' them by asking questions about a situations where they believe other Muslims are currently being oppressed.

Even if the questions are immaculate and order randomised across participants, as recent elections have shown, polls also have a far higher margin of error than most people believe. A poll saying '15% of Zorks support terrorism' probably means, at best, 'Somewhere between 5 and 25% of Zorks support terrorism.

"Over 3 billion sick non-Muslims believe terrorism is a justifiable practice. These savages believe terrorism can be justified for many reasons from environmentalism, protecting religious or cultural values, nationalism and even ISIS-style jihadism.

Although many non-Muslims are peaceful, law abiding people, how many of the 46% of non-Muslims who are genuinely anti-terror have publicly disavowed the advocacy of extremism of their non-Muslim brethren?"

"A massive 30% of non-Muslims sympathise with evil suicide bombers, such as those who are part of the barbaric death cult ISIS.

This means that, worldwide, there are over 2.5 billion who sympathise with this evil practice that frequently kills innocent women and children..

Despite the majority of non-Muslims opposing these atrocities, to date their have been relatively few public statements from the 5 billion non-Muslims publicly declaring their stance on this issue."

Tl:dr, polls generally suck and have a high noise to signal ratio. Commentary based on polls often sucks even more than the polls themselves as the previous 2 examples show.
[Seeing as someone always gets the wrong end of the stick, in case this isn't obvious, they are satirical]

What do these polls tell us about non-Muslim support for terrorism?

 

[Sunstone]

"By terrorist attack, we mean any intentional violent action against civilians, military, police, or governments". That's got to be the crappiest definition of "terrorism" I've heard in the past several years.

 

[Augustus]

"By terrorist attack, we mean any intentional violent action against civilians, military, police, or governments". That's got to be the crappiest definition of "terrorism" I've heard in the past several years.

Another reason why polls like this suck.

 

[Nakosis]

What do these polls tell us about non-Muslim support for terrorism?

Since the results were so easily manipulated by how the question was asked, very little.

A lot depends on the credibility of the company doing the research.

Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world

 

[Sakeenah]

Have seen quite a few posts recently about passive/tacit support for terrorism among 'otherwise peaceful' Muslim populations.

What is rarely given along with such statistics is a comparable figure for non-Muslims. This basically makes the numbers irrelevant for any analytical purposes.

The line of questioning on such polls also has a massive impact, you would get very different responses to:

a) Can terrorism in defence of your religion ever be justified?
b) Do you support the killing of innocents to further your religion in any circumstances?
c) If your religion is being attacked, is terrorism against the oppressors acceptable in any circumstances?

b) will get a significantly lower response than a), and c) will get the highest response of all. The differences will not be trivial either.

Even if you look at the specific question being responded to, the answer to this question will be influenced, perhaps significantly, by the questions that have been asked before this.

For example, if you wanted to increase the number of Muslims who 'support' terrorism in your poll, you could 'prime' them by asking questions about a situations where they believe other Muslims are currently being oppressed.

Even if the questions are immaculate and order randomised across participants, as recent elections have shown, polls also have a far higher margin of error than most people believe. A poll saying '15% of Zorks support terrorism' probably means, at best, 'Somewhere between 5 and 25% of Zorks support terrorism.

"Over 3 billion sick non-Muslims believe terrorism is a justifiable practice. These savages believe terrorism can be justified for many reasons from environmentalism, protecting religious or cultural values, nationalism and even ISIS-style jihadism.

Although many non-Muslims are peaceful, law abiding people, how many of the 46% of non-Muslims who are genuinely anti-terror have publicly disavowed the advocacy of extremism of their non-Muslim brethren?"

"A massive 30% of non-Muslims sympathise with evil suicide bombers, such as those who are part of the barbaric death cult ISIS.

This means that, worldwide, there are over 2.5 billion who sympathise with this evil practice that frequently kills innocent women and children..

Despite the majority of non-Muslims opposing these atrocities, to date their have been relatively few public statements from the 5 billion non-Muslims publicly declaring their stance on this issue."

Tl:dr, polls generally suck and have a high noise to signal ratio. Commentary based on polls often sucks even more than the polls themselves as the previous 2 examples show.
[Seeing as someone always gets the wrong end of the stick, in case this isn't obvious, they are satirical]

What do these polls tell us about non-Muslim support for terrorism?

Great post
As a muslim I'm tired of these polls. I don't understand why it's difficult for some people to understand that the majority of Muslims do not support terrorism attacks.
If we would look at the actual facts the majority of terrorist attacks have been committed by non Muslims.I don't think that all non Muslims support terrorism based on polls or facts. I don't expect non muslims to condemn every violent act committed by a non Muslim because they aren't responsible.

This is an interesting article "Muslims are not terrorists:A factual look at terrorism and Islam"
Muslims Are Not Terrorists: A Factual Look at Terrorism and Islam | HuffPost

 

[Augustus]

Since the results were so easily manipulated by how the question was asked, very little.

A lot depends on the credibility of the company doing the research.

Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world

Yougov is (in theory) a very credible organisation which does polling for many mainstream media outlets (they actually were one of the few that got the UK election pretty correct)

My real point is that polls suck, especially on subjective issues, yet we tend to put a lot of faith in them when they say what we want them to say. Also that commentary based on polls that suck usually sucks even more than the polls themselves.

 

[Grumpuss]

"By terrorist attack, we mean any intentional violent action against civilians, military, police, or governments". That's got to be the crappiest definition of "terrorism" I've heard in the past several years.

What do you expect? The whole intent of the OP is to soften terrorism, or at least- forgive it in Muslim extremists, who commit their slaughter of innocents in the name of Allah and Islam.

I remember hearing this garbage years ago that the Founding Fathers and the rebels were "terrorists" because they were in the minority and fought against the English authority structure in colonial America. That theory conveniently left out that the rebels attacked military installations and personnel, raised an army and obtained their goals by largely political and conventional means. Yes, they did abuse the occasional loyalist. But there was none of this bombing of children "Allahu Akbar" bloodthirsty porn nonsense.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

The whole intent of the OP is to soften terrorism, or at least- forgive it in Muslim extremists, who commit their slaughter of innocents in the name of Allah and Islam.

Actually, no, the point of the OP was:

Tl:dr, polls generally suck and have a high noise to signal ratio. Commentary based on polls often sucks even more than the polls themselves as the previous 2 examples show.

At face value, I'm sure it would seem like it's forgiving or excusing terrorism. Yet the point seemed more to be that one can fluff the numbers of these kind of polls to say pretty much whatever they want them to say, especially through dodgy wording of the questions asked.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I remember hearing this garbage years ago that the Founding Fathers and the rebels were "terrorists" because they were in the minority and fought against the English authority structure in colonial America. That theory conveniently left out that the rebels attacked military installations and personnel, raised an army and obtained their goals by largely political and conventional means. Yes, they did abuse the occasional loyalist. But there was none of this bombing of children "Allahu Akbar" bloodthirsty porn nonsense.

"The occasional loyalist"? We have the actual names of more than 77,000 Loyalists who fled to Canada from various records. 77,000 is about 3% of the US population during the Revolutionary War, and it doesn't include Loyalists who fled but never applied for compensation, or who were killed before they could escape.

And a fair chunk of my own family tree is made up of Quakers who were forced to flee the US. Not because they were loyal to the British crown, but because they were pacifists and refused to fight for the Revolution because they refused to fight for anyone. Many of these conscientious objectors were killed or driven off their land.

I don't think it's inappropriate at all to say that terrorism was a significant part of the American Revolution.

 

[Nietzsche]

"The occasional loyalist"? We have the actual names of more than 77,000 Loyalists who fled to Canada from various records. 77,000 is about 3% of the US population during the Revolutionary War, and it doesn't include Loyalists who fled but never applied for compensation, or who were killed before they could escape.

And a fair chunk of my own family tree is made up of Quakers who were forced to flee the US. Not because they were loyal to the British crown, but because they were pacifists and refused to fight for the Revolution because they refused to fight for anyone. Many of these conscientious objectors were killed or driven off their land.

I don't think it's inappropriate at all to say that terrorism was a significant part of the American Revolution.

ssshhh, stop pointing out the intricacies and gray areas that make up 99% of history and life in general. It's much easier to believe there's a Good Shiney Hero Side and an Evil Monster Shadow Faction.

 

[Augustus]

What do you expect? The whole intent of the OP is to soften terrorism, or at least- forgive it in Muslim extremists, who commit their slaughter of innocents in the name of Allah and Islam.

As @The Ragin Pagan noted, you missed the point.

There was a controversial story headline about '1 in 5 British Muslims sympathise with jihadis' that was presented as something shocking and awful:

The Sun's UK Muslim 'jihadi sympathy' article 'misleading', Ipso rules - BBC News

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/i-conducted-the-muslim-poll-the-sun-jihadi-sympathy

I just posted a poll, from a respected polling organisation, that shows 30% of non-Muslims sympathise with suicide bombers and 7% of them also go beyond this and say they believe Jihadism is sometimes 'justifiable' (never mind the 54% who 'support' terrorism).

You can construct whatever narratives you like out of polls, and you can make polls say pretty much what you want them to say in order to do this.

People tend to be very sceptical of polls that tell them what they don't want to hear, but very credulous towards those which support their pre-conceived opinions.

Polls are generally fake news as they are so unreliable yet a large amount of 'rational' discourse is carried out on the back of them. We should treat them as such across the board, or at least only use them with very clear caveats.

 

[Koldo]

"A massive 30% of non-Muslims sympathise with evil suicide bombers, such as those who are part of the barbaric death cult ISIS.

I have absolutely no idea how one could interpret the 'I do understand why some people might behave that way' as 'I sympathise with suicide bombers'.

 

[Augustus]

I have absolutely no idea how one could interpret the 'I do understand why some people might behave that way' as 'I sympathise with suicide bombers'.

There was a controversial story headline about '1 in 5 British Muslims sympathise with jihadis' that was presented as something shocking and awful:

The Sun's UK Muslim 'jihadi sympathy' article 'misleading', Ipso rules - BBC News

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/i-conducted-the-muslim-poll-the-sun-jihadi-sympathy

Quote from the 2nd article:

"The people I polled did not know how to interpret 'sympathy', and neither did I."

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

This is an interesting article "Muslims are not terrorists:A factual look at terrorism and Islam"
Muslims Are Not Terrorists: A Factual Look at Terrorism and Islam | HuffPost

Thank you.

 

[LuisDantas]

I don't think the OP has paid any attention to the Qur'an, unfortunately.

 

[Augustus]

I don't think the OP has paid any attention to the Qur'an, unfortunately.

Why?

Is it insightful as regards the use of opinion polls in contemporary political discourse?

 

[Koldo]

Quote from the 2nd article:

"The people I polled did not know how to interpret 'sympathy', and neither did I."

Do you honestly believe that those two cases are equivalent ?
Can you tell me step-by-step how you have reached this conclusion ?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I don't think the OP has paid any attention to the Qur'an, unfortunately.

And those millions and millions of followers of Islam who reject terrorism are not true Muslims.

On the other hand, I do not know a single Jew who has or would stone someone for gathering wood on Shabbat. Perhaps we are not true Jews.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

And those millions and millions of followers of Islam who reject terrorism are not true Muslims.

On the other hand, I do not know a single Jew who has or would stone someone for gathering wood on Shabbat. Perhaps we are not true Jews.

Or your scriptures are obsolete... but you've chosen not to revise them.

If that stuff no longer applies, redact it. At the very least, put an asterisk on it with a footnote that says "superseded."

... but if people choose to leave obsolete instructions in their holy books that they proclaim are inspired by God, they shouldn't be surprised when future people read those instructions, take them seriously, and choose to follow them.

 

[Augustus]

Do you honestly believe that those two cases are equivalent ?

Yes, neither is particularly meaningful and both can be used to construct misleading narratives.

Can you tell me step-by-step how you have reached this conclusion ?

Polls suck because they are inaccurate, easy to manipulate, easy to skew accidentally, and excessively subjective on issues such as this yet are presented as 'fact' or 'scientific'.

Narratives based on such polls are exponentially less meaningful than the largely meaningless polls the are based on.

Polls and related narratives on such issues are so unreliable they pretty much count as fake news and are better for confirmation bias than anything else.