I’m not even completely sure what these guys think I’m trying to assert. This thread went weird fast.
I’m kind of petulantly refusing to clarify my intentions because they shouldn’t be in question..* Doesn’t anyone here know me at all? 
Even aside from who I am in particular, as you said, the OP is perfectly damn clear.
*I am not sure how much significance (if any) to give the fact that this so strongly echoes the comment you mentioned from my OP.
See my prior post–it responds to what you’re saying as well.
My expectation is that only a small minority of muslims would answer in the affirmative to any of the three questions from my OP, assuming the first one were sufficiently clarified.
My expectation is that in the US the percentages would be even smaller, of course.
I’m wondering about this because I’m dealing with a person IRL who thinks muslims broadly and generally support the three positions listed, and I think he is kind of immoral for thinking this. But I should have facts at hand before making the argument.
I am dumbfounded that anyone could have thought the negation of any of the above to be true just from reading my OP. But I’ve learned through harsh experience that people don’t know how to read.. People very often have a peculiar inability to just read what’s on the page and understand it for what it is, and they often engage in bizarrely fantastic acts of mind-reading, especially when the subject matter is at all controversial.
This would be understandable in other forums and for unclearly written OPs. Neither of these applies here.
Still, knowing this about people, I should have just stated outright what my intentions were from the beginning, but it honestly didn’t occur to me that I’d need to. Why would anyone think, when I’m asking “what percentage of X’s believe Y?”, that there’d be any reason, IN GENERAL QUESTIONS fer chrissakes, to say anything other than “Here’s a link to some research on the subject.” Maybe a bit of “can you clarify this question” but the mind-reading and aspersions are completely wrongheaded and unnecessary.
Am I hallucinating? Do I not see ‘General Questions’ at the top of this thread?
You do. And yet you still posted this thread in it.
Two people in this thread have been able to give a GQ-appropriate answer to my question. The fact that this was possible proves that the question was GQ-appropriate.
There shouldn’t have been any question of its GQ-appropriateness even before the answers were given. The OP’s GQ-nature speaks for itself. Whatever you’re hearing that makes you think it’s not GQ-appropriate is not coming from the OP. Those voices have a different source…
That could be interesting. Since several people have done a spectacularly disappointing and ill-motivated job of reading my mind, I’ll plainly speak my mind on this particular issue. This is not really GQ-appropriate, but then, neither is almost anything anyone else has said in the thread despite the clear GQ-appropriateness of the OP.
So, my mind says the following regarding what you just said: I don’t know about worldwide, but I suspect that in the US, a greater percentage of Christians would affirm statements like 1 and 3 than would Muslims. I’m not sure about statement 2. I also have very little confidence that I’m right about this. I do think that if you take generational demographics into account, the effect will be more pronounced–second and third generation muslims in the US are far less likely, I suspect, to agree with 1 and 3 than are Christians in general in the US.
This is pure speculation on my part. Seeing the research could be revealing. I do not take my speculation seriously. I am not here to speculate.. But since people seem interested in my speculations for some reason, there they are.
If only there were a message board out there with a forum where someone could pose such questions…
A big problem is the terminology. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. For example, if you were a member of the Maquis in France during World War II, you wouldn’t consider yourself a terrorist. But the Vichy government would.
Exactly. That’s why I was searching for a way not to use the word “terrorism.”
“Kill civilians” or “deliberately target civilians” is what you are looking for.
I was able to find polls for the homosexuality question and the violence question but nothing about how they feel women should be treated. Did anyone else have any luck?
I’ve discussed #2 on these boards before. What’'s strange and interesting is that Muslim attitudes toward homosexuality are much more complicated than you’d think.
If you go by the book, Islam strictly forbids homosexuality, and calls for the execution of men who engage in it. And as we’ve seen, Middle Eastern leaders will insist publicly that there AREN’T any homosexuals in their countries. But as a practical matter, male homosexual activity is EXTREMELY common in the Muslim world, and in many places it’s not only tolerated, its winked at and even tacitly ENCOURAGED!
Google the words “Afghanistan” and “Dancing boys” to get just a sample of what I’m talking about.
When a gay man IS arrested and executed for this “crime,” it’s often a safe bet that either he was either extremely indiscreet or is actaully being punished for something else.
I’m getting a ‘Search for ‘muslim and women’ found 0 questions’ on clicking the above links. Anybody else have better luck?
ETA: And now I find that Aeris edited the links away and I didn’t notice. Sorry.
You can use the same methodology that you’d use for Christians. Take the average Bible belt Christian, add the views of a Unitarian from the northeast, divide by the number of “social Catholics” who don’t go to mass but still identify as Catholic, and then factor in that everyone in Lake Wobegon is above average. That’ll give you a pretty good idea of the average Christian. Of course the views of a Shhite in Indonesia and a Sunni in Detroit will be much more similar than a Southern Baptist and a regular Baptist.
I meant as a comparison. Saying that 40% (or whatever) of Muslims think homosexuality is icky is meaningless in terms of understanding Islam if 40% of Christians and Jews and everybody else also think it’s icky.
Couldn’t you replace that word with pretty much any human group name and still keep it a true statement? An “awful lot” (depending on what you mean by that) of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus would perfectly fit that sentence, if you’re just sticking to religions. You could even put in atheists.
[moderating]
Instead of issuing warnings or mod notes to half the participants in this thread, I’m simply going to move it to Great Debates and let it continue down the path it’s already taking.
[/moderating]
Pretty much every nation believes this, including the governments of the United States, France, Germany, and the U.K. But why just bombing? You can also shoot them. Or stab them with a sharp implement. Whatever gets the job done.
From that link:
“(Warning: there are only 21 Muslims in the sample).”
Okay, so their sample is only 21 people, which is meaningless. And the cite claims 46.2% of Muslims say terrorism is sometimes acceptable - a ludicrous and irresponsible thing to say when your sample’s only 21 people. But there isn’t any whole number that is 46.2% of 21. So these people are not good with numbers.
One of them just sorta kinda believes it, so they only counted him as 0.7 for statistical purposes.