[ April 15, 2024 ]
Here is another of those Pew Research Center opinion polls, complete with its tendentious title:
In Western Europe, familiarity with Muslims is linked to positive views of Muslims and Islam…
The short article goes on to note that those who claim to know “a lot” about Islam are the most negative about Muslims and Islam, while those who claim to know “a little” about Islam are not quite as negative. Those with the most positive views are those who claim to know little or nothing about Islam but do have a Muslim as an acquaintance, friend, or colleague.
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First, the title ought to have been this:
“In Western Europe, the more you know about Islam the more likely you are to have negative feelings about Muslims.”
But that, of course, would never do.
Second, what constitutes “familiarity with Muslims”? The word “familiarity” is impossibly vague. Does “familiarity” mean having a Muslim as a friend? As a neighbor? As a colleague in the workplace? As the owner of a curry restaurant that you favor? As your garage mechanic? As a member of your soccer team? As a parent of your child’s classmate? There is every possible gradation of intimacy. How much, really, do you know about Islam if all you can claim is that you “personally” know a Muslim?
You know almost nothing. You know nothing about the 109 verses in the Qur’an that command Muslims to wage Jihad against non-Muslims. You know nothing about the verses commanding Believers to “strike terror” in the hearts of the Infidels. You know nothing about Muhammad insisting that “war is deceit” and his claim that “I have been made victorious through terror.” You do not know that Muslims are taught to think of themselves as the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims as the “most vile of creatures.” You do not know that Muslim husbands may beat their wives if they prove disobedient, and divorce them merely by uttering the triple-talaq. You do not know that in Islam a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man, or that a daughter inherits half that of a son. You do not know about the dozens of hair-raisingly antisemitic verses, or the verses that tell Muslims not to take Christians and Jews as friends “for they are friends only with each other.”
Across Western Europe, people who say they personally know a Muslim are generally more likely than others to have positive opinions of Muslims and their religion, according to a recent Pew Research Center study in 15 countries. However, knowing something about Islam – as opposed to personally knowing a Muslim – is less associated with these positive feelings.
This pattern is evident across several different questions the Center asked of non-Muslim Europeans to gauge attitudes toward Muslims, including whether they think Islam is compatible with their country’s culture and values and whether they would be willing to accept a Muslim as a member of their family.
Those people who, after they have admitted that they know nothing or very little about Islam (but they “know a Muslim personally”), are asked “whether they think Islam is compatible with their country’s culture and values,” are in no position to answer that question. For this alone, this is a confusing and even senseless poll.
But there is another problem with it. Those being polled were also asked this question: “Do you agree/disagree that ‘Muslims want to impose their religious law on everyone else in the country’? There are many gradations of anxiety about Muslims, and this offers only the highest level. Very few will agree with that statement as written. But what if they had been asked a different, more useful set of questions, such as: “Do you agree/disagree that a growing Muslim population has increased the security threat to this country?” Or “Do you agree/disagree that a growing Muslim population has made life more difficult for many of us”? Or “Do you agree/disagree that a growing Muslim population has been a disruptive development for this country?” Or “Do you agree/disagree that Muslim No-Go Zones are a problem for the police?” These questions make more sense. These are the kinds of anxieties people might be willing to admit, even if they have been subjected to endless propaganda about the need to avoid the appearance of “Islamophobia,” while the statement “Muslims want to impose their religious law on everyone else in the country” will strike a great many of those questioned as simply too extreme, and they will choose to “not agree.” It’s a question deliberately designed to elicit disagreement, and then to make us think — wrongly — that many people are unconcerned about Islam. Ask a different question, or many questions, and the alarm expressed will be palpable.
Too many of us are naive and sentimental when it comes to the matter of Islam. We are naive, because we believe that if we know a Muslim, as the Pew Poll fulsomely puts it, “personally,” then we necessarily must know something about Islam. In fact the reverse is true: the more Muslims we know “personally,” the less likely it is that we will know something true about Islam, for our source of knowledge about the faith — those Muslims we know “personally” — are the most unreliable of informants. Well-versed in taqiyya and tu-quoque, smiling outwardly while hostility lies hidden — these Muslims know exactly how to present themselves to the unwary Unbelievers.
We are Sentimental, because we tend to see Muslims not as they are, but as we want them to be, in our unproven conviction that People Are The Same The Whole World Over. Realism, especially if it involves unpleasantness, is not the sentimentalist’s strong suit. Unsurprisingly, Muslims put their faith’s best face forward with the Unbelievers they have befriended. They want everyone to know: that Islam is much misunderstood and maligned; that its message is peace and tolerance; that Muslims revere Jesus and Mary; that Jihad is a spiritual struggle; that the Five Pillars represent the “essence” of Islam; that in Islam “there is no compulsion in religion” and Muslims are told that “he who slays someone, it is as if he slew a whole people” and so on and so predictably forth.
What is the value of this Pew Poll that was conducted in 15 European countries? What did we learn? We learned that the more you know about Islam, the more you worry about Islam and Muslims. And the less you know, the less you worry. And if you know a Muslim “personally,” then you are even less likely to worry about Islam. The Pew pollers want you to believe that knowing Muslim “personally” gives you some kind of insight or understanding of Islam. That might be true, if we knew “personally” a Muslim in a Muslim land, secure and perfectly willing to reveal his true beliefs. But it is less likely to be true for Muslims in Europe, where they do not yet dominate, and who will be on their best behavior, for now, as they pull out all the stops to deceive and win you over.
To understand Islam you have to study the texts, the teachings, the history of Islam, the history of Jihad. Only thus, and it takes work. Many people would prefer not to engage in such intense book-learning. Besides, all those Arabic names get confusing. How much more pleasant to think you can “learn about Islam” by knowing Muslims “personally” or attending any of the current tsunami of Meet-A-Muslim and Open-Mosque events, which will teach you not about Islam, but about how Muslims can most convincingly offer a sanitized view of Islam. These are different things.
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21 Comments
5 years ago
Well said Hugh. There is a learning curve with Islam but it’s not that difficult. Esp since the stuff one reads is so horrifying, offensive and discouraging, you’re never actually bored and you naturally want to get a good grasp of the subject. The Quran itself however is very dry, repetitive and a mind-numbing read, one of the worst most boring books I’ve ever come across, I felt I lost 20 IQ points just reading it. If all Qurans were burned the world would be much better off, it contains absolutely nothing of value.
Leftists want to be lied to, they like their childish worldview where Muslims are really not as bad as the media or anti-Islam critics portray them to be. And of course Muslims are more than happy to keep feeding them this fantasy they’ve bought into. They’re just biding their time until they reach a certain level of power and wipe us out like they’re doing now to Christians in Africa and the mideast while the whole world yawns.
It just means that those of us who oppose Islam have to work that much harder to educate our fellow citizens about this evil death cult and what it has in store for us should we allow it to gain greater strength and numbers in our nations. There are only two solutions for Islam, banning this ideology and deport all its followers or warfare. Otherwise they will destroy our civilization, since Islam is a machine of mass murder and conquest.
5 years ago
Reply to
Rick Reynolds
“This wretched book … I have been unable to discover in it one single idea of value.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
https://libertygb.org.uk/news/book-reviews-koran
5 years ago
Reply to
Michael Copeland
Great quotes! All true.
From your link – some more great quotes!!!
“An ill arranged collection of badly translated plagiarisms of earlier Jewish and Christian stories.” Christopher Hitchens
“This wretched book … I have been unable to discover in it one single idea of value.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“So long as there is this book there will be no peace in the world.”
William E. Gladstone
“It’s a depressing book. It really is. It’s just the rantings of a schizophrenic. There is also the barrenness of the message. It has no ethical dimension.”
Sebastian Faulks
“… at times violent imagery of torment and punishment in hell, at other times direct commands to believers to deal mercilessly with unbelievers, conveyed in a frenzied torrent of words repeatedly revisiting the theme of hatred and vengeance …”
Mathieu Baudin, comment, Jihad Watch
“… right there in black and white, absolute encouragement – no, a divine instruction – to act atrociously towards the rest of the world. Page after page of it. Sex slaves, the lot. The thing is horrific. … and if you ask my opinion, the thing should be banned for inciting racial and religious hatred on almost every page.”
Former EDL leader Tommy Robinson, in Enemy of the State
“[It] teaches fear, hatred, contempt for others. Murder as a legitimate means of spreading and maintaining this devil’s doctrine. It denigrates women, divides people into classes and demands blood and more blood.”
Voltaire
“It is: a troop motivator, a plagiarized text that is self-referentially incoherent, ungrammatical, illogical and unhistorical, incomprehensible in the original text, a racist manifesto of hatred towards non-Arabs, a solicitation of murder, an anti-Semitic hate text, an anti-Christian death warrant, an extortionist’s manual, a justification for pedophilia, polygamy and violence against women.”
mortimer, comment, Jihad Watch
“… a vicious call to murder, an eternal malevolent force, a self-replicating DNA of hatred, an inspiration toward and legitimization of man’s most evil impulses.”
Dave J, comment, Jihad Watch
“When I have time, I must put it into German so that every man may see what a foul and shameful book it is.”
Martin Luther
An “incoherent jumble of fable and precept and declamation which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, sometimes craws in the dust and is sometimes lost in the clouds.”
Edward Gibbon
“He bestows praise upon such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilised society.”
David Hume
“… that hideously evil piece of trash.”
Saleem Smith, ex-Muslim, Jihad Watch
5 years ago
Reply to
Michael Copeland
correct. Islam is NOT a religion.
“Islam isn’t in the world to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in the world,
and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
«Omar M. Ahmad, founder of CAIR
“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the worlds Governments to be Islamic sometime in the future…”
-lbrahim Hooper, CAIR
“Ultimately, we (Muslims) can never be full citizens of any country…because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of any country.”
«lhsan Bagby, CAIR
“If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land.” –Mustafa Carroll, CAIR-TX
Sure sounds like an enemy of all the world, to me.
Islam violates every nations laws
It espouses sedition, misogyny, bigotry, and cruel and unusual puishment.
Under Sharia law:
There is NO freedom of religion There is NO freedom of speech There is NO freedom of thought There is NO freedom of the press
There is NO equality of peoples There is NO equal rights for women
Islam is a fascist totalitarian theocracy, NOT A RELIGION.
Resist Islam
5 years ago
Reply to
Greatwight
Meh…I agree with you EXCEPT that you say Islam isn’t a religion. I mean…you even used the term Theocracy…which is a government run by religious officials. I think it’s evil and worthless…but it HAS worshipers…it HAS tenets…it HAS a book…I mean, it IS a religion.
3 years ago
Reply to
Defiant
You aren’t wrong but the point is, whatever the semantics, it is EVIL and needs to be
burned into ash and put into the dumpster of history–forever.
3 years ago
Reply to
Greatwight
DESTROY islam. It is time for the Crusaders and the Holy Templers to take up arms and
rise again.
5 years ago
Reply to
Rick Reynolds
Agree. while Hungary keeps jihadis out and deports Left/liberal pro-jihadi Loons http://bit.ly/2gh6A72
Europe/USA denies christians/non-muslims entry and welcomes their murderers.
5 years ago
Very perceptive elucidation of a misleading “survey”. Thank you.
Interview material is notoriously unreliable, yet poll companies persist in it. Vance Packard exposed this in “The Hidden Persuaders” back in the 1950s.
Just a gentle reminder ….. a muslim husband is authorised to beat his wife if he FEAR disobedience from her: there does not have to be any actual disobedience.
5 years ago
a lot of time and energy was wasted writing this article. public polls on issues can be skewed simply by how the question is asked. Most conservatives and Libertarians already know this. Europeans have been conditioned for the past couple generations to be non-confrontational. So asking a European a controversial question they will cower in the corner and give the answer they think the polster wants to hear.
5 years ago
Though I thoroughly agree with this Fitzgerald article, and I have freely admitted that I am Islamophobic, something I consider a very rational concern of mine, a conclusion that I have reached based on what I have seen happen in this world (terrorism) by those of the Islamic persuasion. Fitzgerald talks about those who know Islam’s books can easily determine why we all must come to the conclusion that the philosophy that is Islam is dangerous, and that those who do not know the book’s and/or know a Muslim, are not able to recognize the danger that these believers pose to our free world societies. Yet, although I am familiar with the awful writings that are set forth in their books, it is hard to believe that those who have lived on this earth over the last 30+ years cannot discern for themselves, based on the conduct of the terrorists, that openly justify their criminal acts of terror based on their book’s and the active promotion of Jihad, that we all should conclude, as I do, that Islam is a mortal danger to us non-Muslims. When you superimpose on the horrible conduct of the terrorists that I refer to, the fact that so-called moderate Muslims (if they even exist) have done nothing to reign in the horrible conduct of the terrorists, and on other occasions applaud that horrible conduct, it becomes crystal clear that being Islamophobic is expected of right and reasonable thinking people and all the inane and politically motivated polls in the world cannot change that.
5 years ago
Instead of conducting a rigorous, academic investigation of islum why not just follow the trail of dead bodies? Since the 1960’s there have been four or five genocides of the kafir al najjis (Biafra, E. Timor, Bangladesh, Suda/Darfur) committed by muslums and one is ongoing right now (i.e. in Nigeria). I’m a lot more interested in the manifest, manifold, maleficent effects of islum than the academic reasons for them.
5 years ago
“Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog.” Winston Churchill.
5 years ago
Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.
Kofi Annan
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Anyone who bases a conclusion on ignorance has no conclusion worth discussing.
5 years ago
After 17 years studying Islam, and knowing the word ‘taqiyya’, now a new word: tu-quoque, smiling outwardly while hostility lies hidden. So, the learning never stops. For anybody wanting to know the Truth about this CULT…my best sources have been http://www.thereligionofpeace.com http://www.faithfreedom.org http://www.jihadwatch.org http://www.prophetofdoom.net and http://www.godofmoralperfection.com It is amazing that the Left has remained ignorant of the ‘religion’ that would behead them first, for their pagan, infidel, unbeliever, atheist views. Amazing that the Gay community lives in abject ignorance and stupidity, as they would all be thrown from the highest building and be stoned to death. Unbelievable that American and the World suck up to the CULT that will WIPE THEM OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH, if they ever achieve a worldwide Caliphate.
5 years ago
Reply to
Randall Anderson
Tu Quoque is a fallacy of argumentation much used by muslums, muslum apologists and muslum sympathizers:
“Tu Quoque is a very common fallacy in which one attempts to defend
oneself or another from criticism by turning the critique back against
the accuser. This is a classic Red Herring
since whether the accuser is guilty of the same, or a similar, wrong is
irrelevant to the truth of the original charge. However, as a
diversionary tactic, Tu Quoque can be very effective, since the accuser
is put on the defensive, and frequently feels compelled to defend
against the accusation.”
5 years ago
Reply to
IzlamDownpressesHumanity
This is what the Left always does: never answer the question, change the subject, attack the person…another reason why I no longer debate Libs/Progs/Commie/Pinkos…it is a waste of time.
5 years ago
The hilarious thing is that they don’t realize that they just fake these polls for EACH OTHER! Americans don’t need a poll to tell them the consequences of interacting with Muzzies! Pew isn’t convincing or fooling anyone. Just preaching to the choir…
5 years ago
All polls can be manipulated to fit a greater agenda, including Pew’s.
5 years ago
Personally knowing muslums didn’t much help the majority of Jews who suffered the Farhud pogrom:
https://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2018/07/farhud-casualties-could-have-exceeded.html
I never realized muslums poisoned Jews who were in hospital receiving treatment for injuries caused by other muslums.
I’ll bet the Greek victims of the Smyrna and Istanbul pogroms probably knew muslums as well — for all the good it did them.
5 years ago
Muslums, friendly and tolerant when they don’t have political power, enthusiastic tyrants when they do.
