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Time to end the nonsense!Reader comment on item: How the West Could Lose Submitted by Noah Wilk (United States), Jan 7, 2007 at 02:01 ... it is time to end this nonsense and put to rest this "10% to 15%" propaganda. There are a great many problems with that oft-quoted number, and I'll address each as we go along. First, let's look at a few numbers. A Pew Center Poll in summer of 2006 showed that the majority of Muslims do not even believe that Arabic Muslims perpetrated the heinous and cowardly 9/11 terror attacks. The numbers denying that reality were: Indonesia (65%), Turkey (59 %), Egypt (59%) and Jordan (53%). In another poll, Muslims worldwide were asked: "Is violence against civilian targets justified in order to defend Islam justified?" Now, before we get to the numbers, we need to think about and examine one of the problems I see with these polls that supposedly show just a tenth of Muslims being extremists. What was the poll was actually asking? Remember, Muslims have justified violence with the claim that "Islam was being attacked" when Muslim women were not allowed to wear veils while taking drivers license pictures, when newspapers published cartoons of their prophet, when people have written books critical of Islam, and when the Pope quoted something someone said centuries ago. The Muslim idea of what constitutes an "attack on Islam that justifies violent reaction" is far different from what people in civilized societies would think. That being said, let's look at the numbers. The possble answers were "Sometimes, Rarely, or Never". In Jordan, the number of Muslims who claimed it was sometimes justified was 43% in summer of 2002, 57% in spring of 2005, and in summer of 2006, it was supposedly just 29%. The numbers answering "rarely" were 22%, 31% and 28% respectively in the same time periods. The percentage saying "Never" was 26%, 11% and 43%, which is a wild deviation from year to year. Now, let's combine those numbers (by year) of those Muslims that believe it is justified either sometimes or rarely to use violence against civilians in order to "defend Islam" (ie when a cartoonist parodies it, as we have seen): 2002 - 65% So we have in each year a vast majority of Muslims in Jordan saying that they either rarely or sometimes justify violence against civilian targets in order to "defend Islam", which in each year was far more than the number who believed it was never justified. Keep in mind that Muslims are always claiming that insignificant things such as the publishing of critical books or cartoons are attacks on Islam, and these numbers take on a chilling significance. How can any sane person claim that most Muslims are peaceful when far more than half of them believe it is ok to target civilians for violence over things that civilized people see as insignificant insults? The numbers for Pakistan are even more chilling, considering they have nuclear weapons. Same poll, smae question. Combining the "sometimes" and "rarely" numbers, we get: 2002 - 38% While the numbers are not as high as those in Jordan, they're still much higher than the 10%-15% propaganda. In 2006 the numbers for Egypt were: Sometimes: 28 Clearly, 53% of them, the majority, feel there are times when violence against civilians is justified in order to defend Islam. And once again, we've seen from history as well as current events that something as innocuous as a cartoon or a critical book is often considered an attack on Islam requiring a violent defense. Hardly comforting when we consider Pakistan has The Bomb. In Nigeria, Muslims in 2006 generated these numbers when asked whether it was justified to attack civilians in order to defend Islam, they answered 46% sometimes, 23% rarely and 28% never. That's 69% who at times justify violence against civilians over nonsense like cartoons or honest criticism of the religion. We also have to consider how sneaky Muslims are. How many of them say "never" and are lying? It's a known fact that people often lie in polls when asked whether they agree with or engage in things that make them look bad in the eyes of others. Muslims are also mandated by the Koran to lie to "the infidels" in order to gain an advantage over them. I'd say lying about how violent they truly are would fall under this ideology. In other words, keep tricking the West into believing the majority are peaceful in order to facilitate a demographic/migratory advantage. Hamas, a well-known and recognized terrorist group, won 44% of the popular vote with the so-called Palestinians. In Egypt, 26% claimed the heinous and cowardly 9/11 attacks were justified. That's about double the oft-heard 10-15% nonsense. Polls were done in Turkey on a numbre of issues. We found this... 26% of Muslims favor Iran gaining nuclear weapons, despite Iran's threat to wipe Israel off the map. 59% of Muslims have a favorable view of Iran, which is one of the top promoters of anti-Semitism and extremist violence in the world. 50% considered the victory of terrorist group hamas a positive thing. 70% of them are unfavorable towards Christianity. In 2005, a Gallop Poll showed that 60% of Jordanians and 51% of Pakistanis had a "lot or some" faith in Osama Bin Laden as a force for good in the world. Much higher than 10-15%, now isn't it? An ICM poll in 2006 showed that 40% of Muslims in Britain favored instituting Sharia law. A poll in 2005 among the so-called Palestinians showed that 69% favored having Sharia law, 16% just secular laws, and 11% both. That's 80% favoring some degree of Sharia law, which is the source of so many woes and so much terrorism. And we can go on and on. So how anyone can cling to the ridiculous claim of "10-15% of Muslims are fanatics" is beyond me. The numbers show that in many places, Muslims in vast majorities condone indiscriminate violence against civilians. We have the problem of Muslims being mandated by the Koran to lie about their true beliefs, thus skewing the polls and rendering them unreliable (ie the numbers justifying violence very well could be far higher than the already high numbers show). There are roughly 400 terrorist groups in the world. One single religion, ISLAM, accounts for 90% of them. All other religions on the face of the earth COMBINED, including atheists and other non-believers, consitute just 10% of them. What does that tell us? And while we're at it, let's address the issue of "only" 10-15% of Muslims being violent. There is quite a bit of controversy over the number of Muslims in America. Daniel Pipes himself in this article: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/76 claims that there are 2 million Muslims in America. That would mean 200,000 to 300,000 violent Muslims in America who are hell-bent on destroying us. We saw what just 19 Muslims could do, and even what just 2 Muslims could do (the beltway snipers). Imagine the atrocities a quarter million or more could do! That is simply unacceptable. What other group, that so virulently hates all that America stands for, is allowed to exist in American soil (besides liberal democrats)? And that also means that there are 150,000,000 or so violent Muslims worldwide who are trying to destroy us through cowardly methods of terrorism and mass migration. Putting that into perpsective, what would be the response if "just 10%-15%" of Christians were violent and hated America with the intent to destroy the country? That would come to 45 MILLION enemies of the state living in America. The fallacy of saying it's "just" 10-15% does us all a disservice. The number is absolutely too low no matter how one tries to justify it. It's provably wrong. It ignores very probable errors in the polls and surveys. It minimizes a massive threat that currently exists in America and abroad. It ignores the support given by the "average Muslim" that is difficult if not impossible to poll. It ignores the fact that the Koran itself is violent and encourages terror. It dismisses both historical fact and current events. So my question to Dr. Pipes is...how can you still cling to that number?
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Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Daniel Pipes replies: Again, you have the percentage wrong. I said nothing about 10-15% of Muslims being violent but their being in agreement with the Islamist program. This mistake vitiates much of your analysis. << Previous Comment Next Comment >> Reader comments (2112) on this item
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