trunks2k
Contributor
The poll was commissioned by a group that clearly has an anti-Muslim bias. That fact makes the "random sampling" claim questionable. Secondly, the responses are contradictory, making the quality of the poll questionable. The definition of "Sharia law" was varied among the respondents, causing an "apples-to-oranges" effect. Any opinion poll requires a grain of salt. This one requires a pillar.
I don't disagree. I was more taking issue with the idea of "it was only 600 muslims, so you can't apply that to all muslims". It demonstrated an ignorance of how statistics work. The format of the questions is a whole different issue entirely. I can immediately come up with an issue with them, which is what you mentioned - what the respondents consider Sharia law may not be what a random non-Muslim considers Sharia law and the exact meaning may vary amongst the respondents themselves. As alluded to in other posts, a lot of Muslims see it as a set of religious laws that can be handled by voluntary, binding arbitration by their religious leaders and wouldn't be violations of US law. A similar system used by certain other religious groups. If you assume that a large percentage of respondents see Sharia as that sort of law, then they may see any laws that would make it illegal to be a violation of their religious liberty (indeed, there have been rulings that have said as much in places that tried to outlaw sharia law). Thus, they may think violence can be necessary and right to defend that liberty.
If you told presented a scenario to Christians in which, lets say, christian based marriage counseling by a pastor is outlawed, I'd bet you'd get a good number of respondents to say they could see a violent response being necessary (as it's an intrusion on their personal religion).
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