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Most non-Muslims support terrorism
- Thread starter Augustus
- Start date
Ah - so you were being misleading.^ the arrogant ignorance is stunning.
And this just scratches the surface.
If your scriptures clearly say that those rules you mentioned have been superseded, why would you have even brought up the possibility that Jews who don't follow those superseded rules aren't "true Jews"?
^ the arrogant ignorance is stunning.
And this just scratches the surface.
Could this not be a proper process to prevent others from misinterpreting religion?
You're trying too hard.
Good polls rarely make the definition of terrorism so utterly useless. Why would attacking government or military buildings be terrorism? Duh. Here is what Pew got for actual questions,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?
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2013/04/gsi2-overview-13.png
The question was suicide bombing in defense of Islam is permitted or not. A significant minority in imp countries (Afghanistan 39%, Pakistan 13%, Bangladesh 26%, Malaysia 18%, Egypt 29%) said Yes. I bet that the numbers are nowhere near that high for other world religions.
Then there is the hyper conservative world views that are the majority in Islamic community.
Consider freedom of religion
Number of Muslims who support execution of people who leave Islam
South Asia 76% (excludes India)
Middle East-North Africa 56% (excludes Saudi Arabia)
South-east Asia 27%
These are alarmingly high numbers for such barbaric retrograde views. While most Muslims accept the principle of letting non-Muslims have freedom to practice their religion, freedom of criticism and freedom of choice are rejected. Same kind of attitudes also plague views about women's rights. Thus while many of the ideas may get on paper approval, the substance is lacking.
None of these are necessarily a problem. Most of the world was very conservative and illiberal less than a century ago. But true modernization, democratization requires reform that changes these perceptions, and drive to reform is weak to nonexistent in the Islamic society today. It's the other way round. The most powerful movements are reactionary and seek to create even more illiberal forms of Islam.
Every society that has modernized have gone through a period of deep skepticism about their established religio-social order. You need people like Mark Twain, Voltaire, or deists like Ben Franklin, Spinoza, Jefferson, Hume etc. to criticize the established practices of the religion, to show its problems and blindness so that both secular and religious reform can occur. In India people like Tagore, Ambedkar and other skeptics and reformers did the same. Same in China and South East Asia where Confucius order was put under question. But if a society cannot accept criticism and thinks it's moral to execute or punish them, then it can't reform. That is the problem.
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Wow, there goes a whole huge slice of working science right out the window. Please contact the National Academy of Sciences post haste!
More seriously, let's look at a collection of "coincidences" (??) between the scripture and the Muslim world:
The Quran is the best book ever --> Muslim cultures translate very few books into Arabic
Women are 2nd class citizens ---> Widespread misogyny occurs throughout the Muslim world
Gays are not to be tolerated --> Gays are routinely executed for their gayness
Non-Muslims are 2nd class --> Non-Muslims tend to wither in MM countries
Islam must be submitted to --> Sectarian violence due to "misinterpretations" is never ending
Islam is a total ideology --> MILLIONS of Muslims around the world want Sharia
But of course, the real problem is those pesky polls?
Augustus
…
Because they generally are?
For example, are you suggesting the following do not constitute terrorism?
Red Army Fraction barrack bombings:
Baader-Meinhof Gang attacked U.S. troops, bases in 1970s-1980s
Oklahoma City bombings:
Oklahoma City bombing - Wikipedia
Anyway, such disagreements are again part of the problem with polls. Very similar questions can get wildly different responses which are not easily identifiable to someone looking at the headline figure.
The phrase 'in defence of Islam' is pretty problematic though.
The % of non-Muslims who think terrorism is justified in different circumstances is outlined in the OP. It is pretty high.
Augustus
…
They aren't science that is the thing. That is the point of the OP.
Even on very simple 2 horse political races they are nowhere near as accurate as is claimed.
The OP outlines why these kind of polls are even worse and how easy they are to influence. Any of that you disagree with?
Given that my OP is about polls, then yes, the real problem is those pesky polls.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
The fact that one can get a poll to reflect whatever view is desired by massaging the questions just so is fairly well documented. I was under the working assumption that everyone already knew this. Besides, if you asked the question, "Do you support the actions is the Islamic State?" I'm thinking that not too many would be dumb enough to say, "Oh, yes, absolutely."
Grumpuss
Active Member
...and the effect is to soften the stance on the definition of terrorism, as 9-10ths_Penguin's post later proves.
Thank you for making my point for me. It was not a majority rebellion- if you want to split hairs over what the English loyalists did or didn't do, great.
And yet, here you are, feeding off the fruits of men who fought and died for the very freedoms you enjoy.
I'd say it was outweighed by the tyranny of an English monarch and parliament that didn't care about its own struggling subject. Despite your stories, most people chose to stay and ride out the conflict, not giving much materiel support to either side (though both rebels and English openly often seized what they wanted). Innocent people were not murdered by the Americans to score cheap political points. Guerrilla conflicts are not necessarily terrorist ones, and you would do well to look up the definitions.
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Grumpuss
Active Member
You make an interesting point, but I respectively reject its validity.
Without polls, you are left with an argument from authority or an argument from ignorance. Both rely almost exclusively upon anecdotal evidence only. Indeed before the advent of polls, the only way to gauge public opinion was for op-ed writers and authors to go out into the populace and unscientifically assess what they thought the mood was on particular issues. They would then publish their findings, and hope that their readership trusted their assessments as well as facts.
Polls are of limited use, particularly when flawed methods are used, or indirect / poorly-worded questions are used. But with a little forethought, they can be powerful tools.
Keep in mind also that even as polls gain more widespread use and polling methods are made more accurate and reliable, there are those that would resist and hope to continue to substitute opinion for the public perception. To that end, I would say that a person who challenges a pollster's methodology should be welcomed, but a person who says all polls are too untrustworthy and stupid should be looked upon warily.
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
When a lot of people shape their opinions around polls commonly put out by news networks (see any FOX News viewer), and those polls are based on a small target audience and then applied nationally? Yeah, I'd say that polls are a significant problem in conveying information and representing an issue. I've never been polled, not once, yet there are dozens of polls out there that (incorrectly) claim to speak for me.
So I guess that means I support terrorism, huh?
Lorgar-Aurelian
Active Member
Yeah I don't really care. Fighting against oppression and fighting against someone because they are Kaffir isn't exactly the same thing now is it?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?
Quite a few logical leaps in that post:
- of course not all polls are equally valid
- of course even good polls are not a perfect representation of reality
- of course your personal experience proves nothing
- of course your comment on terrorism is several degrees away from any logic I can imagine
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
Which is the issue of the opening post, not "softening terrorism" as has been suggested. The poll conflates social sentiments and understanding of terrorism to come up with the perceived support of terrorism, when no such support is necessarily there; the OP identifies this issue as not accurately representative of a nation as a whole, or even the people who game their answers.
Nothing is a strong word. If I - and others, make no doubt - have never been polled for big issues, how does the opinions of Harvard students who are polled reflect my views, sentiments, and understandings of global economic and social issues?
My "comment on terrorism" was not actually so, but clearly a comment on my perceived likely sentiment as presented by the shown polls. A presentation in which I had no say in, but presumes to speak my mind for me (and others.) It's a comment on the errant representation of such polls that more often than not send a message that is not explicitly there; I actually didn't say a thing about terrorism itself, but you took that meaning from it. Which, in a way, illustrates the issue entirely.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
If anyone answers "yes" to any of these questions, they have serious mental instability and are a real threat to society. It is disturbing that anyone would be that insane. But, I'm sure there are members of every religion that would.
@Sakeenah makes a very good point in the American environment. I'm much more personally concerned about white nationalist terrorism in the USA given the much higher number of terrorist attacks and the support given for such terrorists by the current regime in the White House. I'm much more at risk of being attacked by White supremacist terrorists if I express fellowship with Muslims than I am of being attacked by a random Muslim terrorist.
It's important to understand national differences in attitudes. From a Pew report section on Islam in America comes demonstrable evidence that what culture one lives in has a profound influence on attitudes and points out one of the strengths of American pluralism.
Living in a religiously pluralistic society, Muslim Americans are more likely than Muslims in many other nations to have many non-Muslim friends. Only about half (48%) of U.S. Muslims say all or most of their close friends are also Muslims, compared with a global median of 95% in the 39 countries we surveyed.
...By all of these traditional measures, Muslims in the U.S. are roughly as religious as U.S. Christians, although they are less religious than Muslims in many other nations.
...As of 2011, U.S. Muslims were somewhat split between those who said homosexuality should be accepted by society (39%) and those who said it should be discouraged (45%), although the group had grown considerably more accepting of homosexuality since a similar survey was conducted in 2007.
No attacks against police or millitary are simply acts of violence not terrorism. If and only if civilians are being directly targeted do we get terrorism. That's pretty well understood . in any kind of war or insurgency attacks on millitary or government targets is fair game. That is well understood. As is espionage and assassination of leaders.
The OP makes almost any act of organized attack into terrorism which is just a complete and deliberate distortion. Neither does the OP ask the specific question:- Is it justified to use suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks against civilian non-millitary targets in defense of religion, nation or group in the course of oppression, war or resistance?
That and only that is terrorism. Nothing else.
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Augustus
…
Can you explain the process you go through to decide upon a poll's validity before using it to support your arguments?