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The 'statistics' on Islam copypasta, and why you shouldn't pay attention to it. (self.AgainstHateSubreddits)

TheZizekiest が 投稿

This Copypasta was posted to the_donald recently, and it is one I have seen before. I will refer to this copypasta as ‘OP’ throughout this text. It is a list of ‘statistics’ meant to ferment Islamaphobia. While the writer never endorses any particular conclusion, the intent of these statistics should be immediately obvious.

In fact, the lack of any analysis done by the source creator is the first major red flag. It is typical of far-right groups to post statistics like this, completely divorced from any context, and to say things like “facts aren’t racist.” Well, I am going to put these sources back into context and show why these statistics shouldn’t be used to endorse anti-immigration, or anti-Islam policies.

Some of these sources are addressed here in the /r/Islam wiki.

Each of the sources will be criticised for one of or more of these reasons;

1.The post often presents the statistics with radically different perspectives from the authors of the sources

2.presents the statistics in misleading was

3.presents statistics collected by questionable sources

4.includes surveys which are outdated.

The first source is a Pew Poll article entitled “Muslim Publics Share Concerns about Extremist Groups.” The way the source is presented in OP implies that Muslim publics have an extraordinarily high opinion of ISIS and Al Qaeda, in contradiction with the title. /r/Islam noticed other right wing copypastas doing the same thing with an article etitled “in nations with significant Muslim populations, much disdain for ISIS.” It falls into categories 1 and 2.

The article claims 67% of Muslims are concerned about Islamic extremism. When it examines Concern over Islamic extremism by country only Indonesia and Turkey have less than 50% of those polled concerned about Islamic extremism. It shows the vast majority of Muslim populations apart from the Palestinian territories, claim that suicide bombing in defence of Islam can rarely/never be justified, and the two largest Muslim populations on the list, Indonesia and Pakistan, over 80% think suicide bombings in defence of Islam can never be justified. “In defence of Islam” implies some sort of existential threat to their way of life, and does not tell us whether the peoples surveyed would do it for explicitly political goals.

In all Muslims populations, except Malaysia, over 50% of the people surveyed hold unfavourable views of Al-Qaeda, and in most countries surveyed, except for Palestine and Egypt, the majority of people answered “don’t know” whether they hold favourable or unfavourable views. Similar trends are seen for the Taliban. OP claims the statistic is for “Muslims worldwide”, the Pew Poll document claims the statistics for “publics surveyed”, this further distorts the stats, as it is extrapolating from samples of 800-1000 to populations of millions. As well as this, a more recent Pew Poll, from 2014, says that support for all of the things mentioned is declining..

The next source is from the blog andrewbostom.org, written by the eponymous Andrew Bostom. Bostom is a professor of medicine, and author, whose latest book is called Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism. This falls into category 3. This poll itself appears to be of around 600 participants, extrapolating to 2.75 million Muslims. Bostom ends his writing on the poll with the phrase "it should be noted, 81% of this sample of Muslim Americans were either 'definitely for Obama,' or 'leaning Obama'" as though that is a meaningful criticism.

The polling data itself comes from Wenzel Strategies, the polling data can be found in an article called “Guess who U.S Muslims are voting for”. A Pew Pole from a year earlier suggested that American Muslims were much more moderate than the poll by Wenzel Strategies. Wenzel strategies has also been criticised for asking questions, and presenting the data in misleading ways, both in 2009 and 2012.

The next source is an ICM poll, mentioned in the Telegraph. It falls under criticisms 2 and 4. The amazing thing is, they have to misrepresent an anti-Islam source, for greater anti-Islamic effect. The original poll asked not whether they supported Sharia law in Britain, but in “parts of Britain.” The poll is from 2011. In a [poll from this year] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law) 23% of British Muslims surveyed want Sharia Law in the United Kingdom, and 78% of British Muslims “said they would like to integrate into British life on most things apart from Islamic schooling and some laws.”

The next source is a Pew Poll from 2010. The examination on this pall can be criticised under 2. OP only mentions one of numerous questions asked, another question shows that in Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia over half of the people who see a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists identify with the modernizers, and those countries with the more fundamentalist populations surveyed correspond to those with harsher laws. It is evident that there are modernizing trends, and in these surveys they are identifiable by country, which suggests a correlation between national context and desire for a more modernized Islam. OP once again extrapolates from people surveyed to entire populations of countries.

The next survey is one from the Gatestone Institute. This is a 3.

Gatestone fellow Soeren Kern claimed that "Dutch Moroccan criminals are known to be highly indifferent to sentences in Dutch prisons," concluding that "it is only the threat of deportation, more than any other measure, that is likely to deter young Moroccans from a life of crime.” They have been heavily criticised for being far-right propaganda. One of their authors was supposedly idolised by Anders Breivik. If you are going to criticise Islam for violence, please do not link groups whose publications have played some role in radicalizing Westerners.

The next survey links to a CNS new article entitled “Zogby Poll: Most Americans Want Strengths and Weaknesses of Darwinism Taught In Schools”. While I didn’t read the entire article a ctrl+f for each the first five nouns listed in the statistics in the OP, found zero results. This one doesn’t fall into any of my four categories. It is straight up false.

The next list of statistics is a 2. The OP says 61% of Egyptians favour attacks on Americans, the source itself says 84% disapprove of attacks on civilians in America, the rest of the statistics have similar disrepencies. My theory is that the OP took the statistics relating to attacks on civilians in America, attacks on US troops in Iraq (this survey was conducted in 2009), attacks on US troops in the Persian Gulf, and attacks on US troops in Afghanistan, and worked out the percentage of people who approved attacks on any American group as ‘favour attacks on Americans.”

This is hugely misleading. At the time of the survey, two of the groups (American troops in Iraq and American troops in Afghanistan) were invading forces, and the war in Iraq was particularly unpopular internationally. Attacks on Americans obscures the fact that the Americans who the people surveyed approve of attacks on were Americans invading Muslim countries. Moreover, the OP claims that these people ‘favour’ attacks on Americans, when the survey asked if they ‘approve’ which is immensely different, given the context.

The next set of statistics come from NOP research. While I cannot find the actal survey data, I found the television program they originally appeared in.. The survey dates from 2006. I would call it a 3 and a 4. The results I get when I search for ‘NOP research’ are NOP World Ltd., and GFK. Apparently GFK bought NOP World in 2005](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GfK). Either way, both of these companies are market research, not polling companies. Market research is very different to polling. Without being able to see their method, I cannot properly evaluate the poll. It’s also from 2006. This data is also contradicted by other polls, which I will mention later.

OP’s treatment of the next Pew Poll is a 2. The survey asked respondents if they thought suicide attacks were “justifiable” not if they “supported” their actions. These are two very words, given the context. This means 59% of respondents thought that suicide attacks in a country which had been in war until a year before were unjustified.

Continued in comments...

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[–]TheZizekiest[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

The next source is in Dutch. I assume the majority of the_donald can’t read it. It is a 2. Apparently the original source was in the Gazet Van Antwerpen, although it does not state who took the survey or what date the Gazet published it. It also states that some 8/10 Muslims think groups such as Sharia4Belgium bring a bad name to Islamic youth, IDK, my Dutch isn’t amazing. Ik heb geen Nederlands gesproken in jaren. It also does not state that 16% of young Muslims find terrorism acceptable, it states that 16% of young Muslim boys find terrorism “aanvaardbaar”, which to me means tolerable more than acceptable, but again, my Dutch is not fantastic so that may be incorrect.

The next post was a dead link. So I went to the wayback machine. On Aril 17 2004 there was an ICM poll posted at this link. The poll was of 501 people, a much smaller sample than most, and 34 of these were selected after their phone numbers were given to the pollsters by other respondents. This is a 4, but it also only paints part of the picture.

The survey does not use the word “obligated”, unlike OP. It asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement “I agree with the mosques, that Muslims should inform on people who are involved or connected with terrorist activities. 69% of respondents agreed. 86% of respondents said that they disagree with people who think it is ok to use violence to achieve political ends. The survey also paints a picture of a very integrated Muslim community; 37% of respondents have a lot of non-Muslim friends while only 6% have none and 11% very few, 40% of respondents believe Muslims need to do more to integrate into mainstream British culture, and only 20% believe it is integrating too quickly.

The next link is dead. I tried to remove the everything after .pdf, but was told I do not have permission to access the resource. So I went to the wayback machine. I was presented with a 108 page document, so I just skipped to page 60. The statistics here divide the percentage by often/sometimes and rarely think suicides are justified. Grouping often and sometimes I a single category is slightly dishonest on behalf on Pew, these two words imply drastically different things.

It must also be noted that the poll itself asked if suicide bombings can be justified to defend Islam. So the question is not asking about suicide bombings in general, but suicide bombings to defend a person’s religion, presumably from some violent existential threat. The question itself is very leading as is, and the OP is further distorting it. The /r/Islam wiki discusses an identical tactic use to misrepresent a survey of Muslims from 2013 in the section entitled “Violence and Terrorism.”

Furthermore, the /r/Islam wiki mentions a Gallup poll from 2011 which asked a similar question to the 2007 Pew Poll we are currently discussing. This more recent poll asked whether or not it was ever justified for the military to target civilians. Muslim respondents were far more likely to respond never than any other group (78% of Muslims said never, the next highest was 54%) and only two groups had more responses for never than sometimes; ‘Muslims’ and ‘no religion/atheist/agnostic.’

This 2011 poll also asked the same question, but for civilians targeting civilians rather than military targeting civilians. While this one was closer, Muslims had the highest percentage of never responses, at 89%, second was 79%. This more recent poll defies the one posted in OP, and also has the advantage of comparing Muslim American views to the views of Americans of other religions. While a game of whataboutism doesn’t really help anybody, it is important to remember that significant portions of Americans support the use of drones which often hit civilian targets or, the believe the dropping of atomic bombs on civilian targets was justified. It is especially important to remember this when someone is trying to convince you that Islam is evil because some Muslims say that attacks on civilian targets are sometimes justified.

The next source is the WikiIslam page on Osama Bin Laden. The statistic quoted in the OP is cited in the WikiIslam to [this dead link][(http://www.aljazeera.net/Portal/Aspx/SurveyResult.aspx). This source falls under 4, 2 and 3. I would guess it cites the WikiIslam, because the original source is in Arabic, although it can be translated to English.

I went to the wayback machine. The original version of the page is dated 9 April 2006, so I’m going to call this survey outdated. The WikiIslam sources this statistic to September, but the only survey results captured by the wayback machine was the April survey. The April survey does not ask anything about support of Osama Bin Laden, as the OP and WikiIslam claim. It mostly asks what people thought would happen in Iraq after the war. So this is another outright fabrication.

I would also like to mention the use of the WikiIslam to support their claims. This source is extremely anti-Muslim, so it is no surprise they would lie to further their agenda. Their page on Islam and Miracles, for example, is a list of summaries of articles which refute the claims. Among its ‘core articles’ - these “contain an overview of other articles related to a specific issue, and serve as a starting point for anyone wishing to learn about Islam” - are paedophilia, propaganda and violence. The page on violence only talks about violence committed by Muslims not violence against Muslims. This isn’t a place to learn about Islam, and it certainly doesn’t give room to Muslims to describe their religion in their own terms.

Next up is the 2006 Populus Poll. Once again, the supplied link was dead, so I found it through the wayback machine. This one falls under a 2. It misleads by removing the context from these questions, and also by, once again, changing the wording of the survey to make the answer imply something much different to what was actually the case.

The first states that 16% of Muslims think suicide attacks against Israelis are justified. This isn’t quite wat the survey says. The question in the survey asks “are there any circumstances under which you think suicide bombings can ever be justified in the following paces – Israel?” 16% said yes, that is 81 respondents, 22 said they don’t know (4%), and 67 said refused/didn’t want to answer. The survey also asks the same question of the UK, and only 7% of Muslims said they could think of any circumstances where suicide bombings could be justified in the UK.

This question about the UK directly contradicts an earlier statement in the OP.. Here it says 1 in 4 British Muslims thought the 7/7 bombings were justified. Both surveys were asked at about the same time. Ultimately, when you examine the sources endorsed in the OP they don’t provide any clear, objective picture. There are incongruities, and this shows the major flaw of this sort of post.

The point of the OP is not to provide a rigorous analysis of data to reach some sort of meaningful understanding of Muslim perspectives. The goal is to convert people to a specific political view. Given its posting on the_donald the presumption is that in this case it was posted in order to provide support for Trump’s stance on Muslim immigrants. I’m not going to do a write up on what it take to do good statistical evidence, but it is not merely linking select statistics without any comment. One should always use the same wording as the survey when referencing it (OP regularly omits whole parts of the question or changes key words), and you should compare to similar questions from similarly dated surveys (even though the OP compares multiple surveys it never compares results to similar questions, instead picking a new statistic each time) you should also try and evaluate the methodology and the questions asked to see how they could have lead respondents to certain answers (many of the polls in OP have not made this information available).

Continued in reply to this comment...

[–]TheZizekiest[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

The next source is a survey by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. It is referenced here and here. The original can be found here. This one is a 2.

First of all, OP says 62% of Muslims want Sharia law in Canada, and 15% say make it mandatory. Included in that 62% are 47% of the total respondents who said that Ontario laws should “Allow individual Muslims or Muslim families to choose to be ruled by Sharia courts in the case of divorce and other family matters if they want to.” The 15% who want to “make [Sharia law] mandatory” only want to do so for Muslims, and half of that group only think it should be mandatory for family matters. The OP leaves out a lot of information, particularly that the Sharia courts would only apply to Muslim populations. It also ignores the fact that for a significant majority of people the Sharia courts should only be for family matters. Finally, it ignores the fact that the majority of residents who want Sharia courts want them to be optional. Basically it omits all the information which shows that Muslims do not want Sharia courts as a replacement for the current system but as an alternative system exiting alongside, current Caadian law which Muslims could use when appropriate.

The other stat from this survey claims 35% of Canadian Muslims would not repudiate Al-Qaeda. First of all, the survey itself says “Survey respondents were asked to score their degree of approval or disapproval of four Muslim extremist groups, two non-Muslim groups, and the Iranian regime…The most enocouraging finding is the pervasive repudiation of Al Qaeda.” The interpretation of the source I OP is obviously different to the way those ho conducted te survey interpreted it. Once again, the result in OP requires the manipulation of data. 65% full rejected Al Qaeda, only 1% fully supported Al Qaeda. The remaining 34% are then claimed from those who partially support Al Qaeda. But this is still inaccurate, as 25% of people answered that they did not know. The actual percentage of people who support Al Qaeda to any degree, according to this survey, is 9%. The survey asks respondents to rank their level of support on a scale of 1-7, with 7 being total approval. Excluding the 65% who answered 1 (total disapproval), 2 was the most popular ranking, with 4%, followed by 3 with 2%. The table in the original source claims that only 3% of Muslims surveyed support Al Qaeda. Now admittedly, these original surveys were manipulated in the sources the OP gets them from. Personally, however, I follow up statistics if I am going to try and use them to back up my argument.

The next source is in Arabic. I cannot read Arabic, but I suggest the majority of people who post this copypasta across Reddit cannot either.

The next source has a degree of irony. It is a post by the Washington Institute which, in part, criticises the way John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed manipulated statistics to claim only 7% of Muslims were extremist. The belief in justification for 9/11 is important, because a view that the attacks were completely justified is one of the criteria Esposito and Mogahed use to determine radicalism. Most of the review, however, is not arguing against their definition of radicalism, but rubbishing the polls themselves.

For this reason, these results are a 3. Many of the criticisms Robert Staloff makes of Esposito and Mogahed are similar to the ones I make to this source, including criticism of the use of a pool without giving people access to the poll data itself. Add to that Staloff’s accusations that they misrepresented their sample size, and you are left with a survey which, in the first place, probably wasn’t all that great.

Well, I made it. The final source! And both of the links are dead. Once again, I found them on the wayback machine. One of the statistics presented here, that 1 in 4 British Muslims have of heard of the Holocaust, does not seem that terrible. If you look at the source (page 28), you see that first generation Muslims are significantly more likely to have not heard of the Holocaust. I hardly think we can hold a grudge towards people because they weren’t taught something.

The other source. On page 17 it makes the claim that only 34% of Muslims who support express a preference for British law believed the Holocaust actually happened. They extrapolate this to mean that 60% believe it has not happened. This is a misrepresentation of the data. The options to answer the question “Do you believe the holocaust happened?” are; ‘yes – as history teaches it,’ ‘yes – but it’s been exaggerated,’ ‘it did not happen at all,’ ‘I haven’t heard of the Holocaust,’ ‘no opinion’ and ‘don’t know.’ The 34% is the percentage of those who support British law that think the Holocaust happened as history teach it. While it does not tell us how many people believe it did not happen at all when controlling for this variable it cannot be 60%, as only 2% of the total group believed that the Holocaust did not happen at all.

The OP, and the second source, both omit some important contextual information as well. The proportion of Muslims who believe the Holocaust happened as history teaches it is much higher amongst those of social grade ABC1, and much lower amongst people of social grade C2DE. Apparently, wealth and education have some correlation with, well, education.

The statistics in OP are rarely, if ever, facts. If they get posted with the comment “facts aren’t racist” then you can respond “No, but the way you’ve manipulated them is.” That is what this post is, it is pure propaganda using statistics to masquerade as factual. Few of the stats say what OP claims, many are outdated, some come from illegitimate sources, some are completely falsified, and even when the statistics are accurate they are stripped from all context and used to defend a conclusion the pollsters did not arrive at.

[–]TheZizekiest[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

If you have any criticism, or things to add please comment

If you see people post the copypasta, please post this in response. If they post individual statistics from it, or an incomplete version, feel free to cut and paste the relevant parts of this in response.

If you enjoyed this then please check out my response to the Human Biodiversity Resource

[–]SnapshillBot 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Snapshots:

  1. This Post - 1, 2, 3

  2. This Copypasta was posted to the_do... - 1, 2, 3

  3. here - 1, 2, 3

  4. /r/Islam - 1, 2, 3

  5. /r/Islam - 1, 2, Error

  6. As well as this, a more recent Pew ... - 1, 2, 3

  7. “Guess who U.S Muslims are voting f... - 1, 2, 3

  8. a year earlier - 1, 2, 3

  9. 2009 - 1, 2, 3

  10. 2012 - 1, 2, 3

  11. the Telegraph. - 1, 2, 3

  12. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news... - 1, 2, 3

  13. Pew Poll from 2010 - 1, 2, 3

  14. Gatestone Institute - 1, 2, 3

  15. "it is only the threat of deportati... - 1, 2, 3

  16. One of their authors was supposedly... - 1, 2, 3

  17. The next survey links to a CNS new ... - 1, 2, 3

  18. next list of statistics - 1, 2, 3

  19. television program they originally ... - 1, 2, 3

  20. NOP World Ltd. - 1, 2, 3

  21. GFK - 1, 2, 3

  22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GfK - 1, 2, Error

  23. Pew Poll - 1, 2, 3

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