If we do manage to find some stats, they would only make sense in context compared to other beliefs.
For example, it might sound totally outrageous if 9% of Muslims believe that suicide bombers deserve sympathy, until you compare it to another survey saying 9% of Christians believe that communion wafers LITERALLY turn into the flesh of Jesus, or 9% of Americans believe the moon landing was a hoax, or 9% of college graduates believe that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, et cetera.
Late correction, the Iraqi debate was about Islam as ‘a’ or ‘the’ fundamental source of legislation per the constitution. It wasn’t about adopting Sharia as ‘the’ legal system. But my basic point is that ‘a’ v ‘the’, at least as it’s rendered in English, became a major sticking point, so I don’t think the ‘the’ can just be excluded in interpreting the answers to the Pew poll. Of course people don’t always fully listen to poll questions, answer the question they want to answer, etc. Still.
If 9% of ‘some religion we’ve never heard of No 1’ had sympathy with suicide bombers generally of that religion (let’s say the great majority of recent suicide bombers were from SRWNHO1, though in theory the respondents could be thinking of the relatively rare, or long ago, suicide bombers from other religions), you’d find that no more disturbing than 9% of ‘SRWNHO2’ which had beliefs of no direct* influence on other peoples’ lives you found absurd? I find that hard to believe.
*you could start in on how it indirectly influences your life that some people are so inferior to you in understanding of the world or even things unseen. Still hard to believe that if you put PC and anti-Christian animus aside you’d really put belief in transubstantiation and suicide bombing on the same footing as a threat to society.
No, they can not honestly argue about cause and effect. Anybody who Looks at history of Western Europe can see one trajectory: from theocracy (of the Christian type) in the Medieval Ages, restricting rights based on religious ideas (not based on the Bible, but on one specific Interpretation of the Bible that was useful for the People in power) towards more freedom and secularity in laws - and only because People fought for it: the Jews who were marginalized, later the Humanists who fought for states making laws based on humanistic = secular principles.
It’s only troubling if you compare it to the large number of Christians, esp. Evangelicals, in the US who would answer “Yes” to the question of Bible-based law, and who are activly spending a lot of Money and influence to Change the laws (see: abortion, see: discrimination against LGBT, see: Loopholes on abuse reporting for clergy…)
Show them a working Democracy - not a kleptocracy - and help them get a working govt. that is neither corrupt nor oppressive (good luck with that, since most of the past US interventions, whether stealth CIA or open warfare, were only with regards to US interests, not on how creating a win-win Situation for both sides).
Moderate would be “non-Extremist” = everybody who answers “I only want to live in peace, I don’t want to blow others up, but I don’t want to bombed by a drone either, and stop selling weapons to our oppressive govt.”
Getting hung up on Sharia law, given the wide-spread meaning, is not useful on getting a realistic Picture of the Situation, and therefore make better informed decisions on how to help the People improve their lives.
Neither is asking People about extremism or terrorism, given that “Terrorist” has become the new “communist”: every authocrat govt. can Label their Opposition “terrorists” and get Money and weapons and aid from the US for the War on Terror, without looking in Detail what methods the govt. uses, or what the Opposition is against, and what methods they use.
No, it means that 9% or some similar number of Population is off their gourd, no matter which Country, culture or belief System. See the many White mentally unstable (cultural at least Christian) men in the US that went on mass Shootings in the past few years. What exactly they were garbling and what conspiracy theories they were mixing up in their heads didn’t matter much, they knew that the govt. was Controlling them via mind rays / that Hillary was child trafficking with a Pizza parlor / that blacks were planning a race war / …
So belief in Alien conspiracies or Lizards beneath the masks gives an indicator on how many crazies are running around needing mental health. Even the Norwegians couldn’t stop Breivik - but they could deal with it.A 100 years ago, anarchism was the case en vouge worth bombing places for; in the 60s it was racism, Vietnam and communism, now it’s IS to make a martyr out of a lost angry man. 30 years onward, it will be a different cause.
Until only some years ago, in the then French oversea territory of Mayotte (Indian Ocean), civil and family cases could be heard by a cadi ruling according to sharia law . Mayotte isn’t particularly known for Muslim extremism.
Being in favour of Sharia law doesn’t mean much without a lot more detail about what the person has in mind exactly.
Since the idea of the sharia can vary greatly even in the native context, what is debatable is to load the ambigious poll question with any kind of the conclusions about any deep thinking behind it. A high percentage may only be the morality signaling becuase the person thinks saying that signals they want a less corrupt better juridical system, or it mi
The wordings of some poll questions about Sharia are vague, surely.one I linked, by a pretty well respect international polling org Pew, presented the results as yes to “the official law in your country”.
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Pew is indeed respect, but whatever the reading the question can cover much ground.
The troubled and now highly sectarian divided country of the Iraq is not an excellent way to understand the different meanings people can attach to the idea of Shariah or what they actually want.
However, you set up a false contrast between a liberal western system with “voluntary” whatever and other potential meanings in the context of the developing world.
For the region most of the systems are indeed secular law, based on the Egyptian interpretation of the Code Civil, with slight touches. To say in the Iraq that the Sharia should be the source of legislation - if this is an actual fact - is to say the secular law system should have its laws drawing from the (a) Sharia.
It is not the same as the direct application of the (a) Sharia.
Illiberalism is one thing.
Religious modreation another thing.
Since you are mixing two different things, and ignoring multiple other factors, I do not think there is a basis of understanding.
I would assume and expect that vastly more than 9% of Christians believe that communion wafers do literally, in some sense, turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. The Real Presence is a core dogma of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and (in a somewhat different form) Lutheran churches, and most though not all Anglicans as well.