Wow. Over the past several months I've been trying, informally, to get an idea of what percentage of Muslims overall are "moderate"--and that at least entails "does not want sharia." I've been guessing about 30% world-wide do not want sharia. One thing is for sure: The idea that Jordan is a "moderate" Islamic country is absurd, as absurd as the idea that Islam itself is moderate.

Posted by: Archimedes at February 9, 2006 7:22 AM

after most of the ones wanting freedom have left their country, you have the hard core fanatic left behind.

Posted by: Lulu at February 9, 2006 7:27 AM

l forgot to ask..you should always questions these studies.. have they asked only men these questions, and if asked of women was it in front of their husbands or brothers, etc.

Posted by: Lulu at February 9, 2006 7:29 AM

That is a salient point you raise Lulu. I wish I knew the answer.

Posted by: Anthony at February 9, 2006 7:43 AM

I hope no one here is stupid enough to think that the implementation of sharia by groups like the Muslim brotherhood will mean literal interpretation like cutting the hand of thieves, right?

Posted by: Ispanan at February 9, 2006 8:13 AM

Ispanan:

Amputation according to Sharia law, Nigeria, 2005:
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=251387

Top Ten Reasons sharia law is bad for Anyone (with numerous recent examples):
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4726

Death by Stoning under Sharia law, 2002:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,777972,00.html

And one can Easily go on.....

Posted by: Gary at February 9, 2006 8:28 AM

What other result is possible, in a society where citizens are relentlessly indoctrinated to Islamic dogma, starting from early childhood and continuing throughout their existence? The indoctrination proceeds unremittingly in the mosque, in government, in education at all levels, and in the media. Open dissenters, if there are any, are doomed to meet Islamic justice--death for apostasy. Such a nice, peaceful society! Noble, too!

Posted by: Stendec at February 9, 2006 8:29 AM

I never understood the greatness of Sharia law. Stealing gets your hand and foot cut off. Adultery gets a guy lashes and a woman stoned or hung. It permits honor killing.

What is the ONE good thing about this law? So if a person steals because they are say, poor, how does cutting off his hand and foot make his situation better??

If it's just to cull the bad people and scare the crap out of the others....well, it's just a drastic way of life.

Posted by: freewoman at February 9, 2006 9:09 AM

Of course even this bar graph does not show the real desires of most Muslims, because such countries as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan are left out.

In fact, three of the four countries listed-- Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon (that is, aside from Eastern "Palestine" or Jordan, and Western "Palestine" or "Palestine" which is not a country, but a political concept, and not a very good concept at that) are the three Arab countries with the highest percentage of Christians.

So even here there is an UNDERSTATEMENT of the reality. For in Egypt, 10% of the Epopulation that has managed to remain Copt (most of the others being merely the descendants of those who were forced to convert, with the big push coming from the 13th century onward), the Maronites who managed to withstand the islamization and arabization (save for the use of the Arabic language) and other Christians, and in Syria there remain many Christians, including several hundred thousand Armenians in Haleb (Aleppo) and elsewhere. And the Alawites, who make up another 12% of the Syrian population, are also threatened by "real" Muslims because, with their worship of Miriam and other syncretistic features, are not regarded as full-fledged Muslims, and they know it -- even if the American government does not understand. And the same goes for the Druse, numerous in Lebanon and in Syria.

And the existence of still significant communities of non-Muslims has another effect. Their presence, their activities, their newspapers, their ways of behaving and thinking, of course are anathema to most Muslims, but nonetheless for some of the more advanced Muslims, those ways of thought and life offer, willy-nilly, an example of another way of doing things, of viewing the universe, and on some Lebanese Muslims, as on some Indian Muslims, this has had an effect. (Similarly, the Arabs within Israel have benefited from their proximity to the large Jewish population and to a well-functioning government, and are clearly superior to the "Palestinian" Arabs from a cultural and political standpoint)..

Finally, the figures showing support for Shari'a are clear in what they mean, or should mean. Muslims take Islam seriously. The ideal is the Shari'a, today enforced most thoroughly in Suadi Arabia, Sudan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Pakistan. Other countries that claim not to be ruled by the Shari'a in fact use it as a model. In Egypt, for example, theoretically there is equality under the law (which the British under Cromer tried to bring in). In fact, many cases demonstrate that Copts suffer not only from discrimination, but from a legal system that systematically disfavors them.

One should, in talking about the Shari'a, focus not so much on the hudud punishments which Saudi Arabia never abandoned, which Zia al-Haq put into place in Pakistan in 1969, which any country, as it becomes more "Islamic," and which a Muslim poster above both would have us focus on, and which he disingenuously pretends is nowhere applied, when it is applied every day, and every one knows it, in Saudi Arabia ("staunch ally"), the Sudan, Afghanistan under the islamically true-blue Taliban, and elsewhere.

Infidels should think not only, or even mainly of either the hudud, or of the treatment of women under Shari'a. No, they should think first of what this means for Infidels. And what it means for Infidels, as you can discover for yourself in Bat Ye'or's "The Dhimmi" and "Islam and Dhimmitude" and "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam," or in the classic legal work on the subject, Antoine Fattal's "Le statut legal des non-musulmanes en pays d'Islam" (a book that needs to be translated into a dozen other languages, and quickly) is a permanent state of degradation, humiliation, and physical inseucrity for all Infidels.

That is what most Muslims want. They want Islam. They want the real thing. They know that "Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated." Why do so many blithely tell us, without the slightest evidence, that that is not "what the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims want." It is what they want, and the "peace" they love is the "peace" that will come when Islam finally has no enemies, no Infidels opposing its spread across the globe.

Take Islam seriously. War-planning generals, pontificiating journalists -- find out what is in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. Find out about the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation, and find out what things happened, during the last 30 years (it has all been set out here at JW, a hundred times) to make the theoretical prescription of Jihad a reality, for the doctrine never went away, and never will.

Do not assume, like all those polypragmonic Enders of Poverty and Disseminators of the American Way, who gravitate to government and to NGOS (an execrable example being that weapons-systems analyst, Paul Wolfowitz, with his shallow world-transforming ideas )so convinced that if they only present the world with a certain way of doing things ("democracy") the most alien and hostile of creeds will, once it gets the hang of electing aldermen and appointing dog-catchers, simmer down, forget about Islam and what Islam inculcates, and the whole wide world will be able to get along.

Ahmad Chalabi, Kanan Makiya, Rend al-Rahim -- these people are not Iraq. They do not represent Iraq. Fawzi Ghadri does not represent Syria. Alhamedi, the Religious Policeman (whom see) is not a representative Saudi, but a brilliant, humorful, most unrepresentative Saudi. Aly Salem does not represent Egypt -- he represents Aly Salem. Stop taking the most cultivated, and most advanced, and entirely unrepresentative examples from the Muslim world, and assume -- as some of them even wish to assume -- that these are the kind of people who exist in great numbers.

They don't. Even they, many of them, cannot face up to the connection between Islam as a mental/cultural/political system, and the poltical, economic, social, and intellectual failures of the Muslim peoples and countries. Even they cling, especially if they are Arabs, to an exaggerated idea of what was created in, and a wrong idea of by whom, in high Islamic civilzation. The real history of Islam, for many of them, is simply too painful to endure. Filial and civilizational piety are strong emotions. And for Arabs, as opposed to Muslims from Iran or the sbucontinent, Islam and Uruba or Arabness are too connected for one to be jettisoned without doing damage to the other. This is why the apostates from Islam are, in the main, from the non-Arab Muslim population.

But read the bar graphs right. Horrifying, but not nearly as horrifying as they would be if the results of opinion pollis in Muslim countries without large non-Muslim populations were depicted.

Democracy On the March? Democracy as the Panacea? Or "Democracy" as a Way for the American Government to avoid facing up to the nature, and menace, not of "Islamism," and not of "Wahabbism," and not of "Salafism," and not of "Wahhabi-Salafism," but of Islam, Islam as set out, and available for all to find out about, in the immutable and canonical texts -- Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira -- and in the commentators and jurisconsults who took the principles and fashioned the Shari'a, and in the work of Western historians who, during the last century, began to work, without relying only on Muslim sources, on the Biggest Story Never Told --- what happened to the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of non-Muslims whose lands were conquered by far smaller numbers of Muslims, and what was their fate, and how did they live, and what led many of them to convert or "revert" to Islam, from Spain to East Asia, from the late 7th century until today? The contributions of individual scholars, and on the eyewitness accounts of Western travellers and diplomats and merchants, not to mention the chronicles unearthed written by the affected non-Muslims thesmelves (e.g. Arakel of Tabriz) have all been used by Bat Ye'or in her pioneerng studies of the dhimmi and dhimmitude. But her work is not final -- it does not treat of the subject of dhimmis in India, or elsewhere in Asia, for example. It is an edifice, but an edifice upon which more can be built, and will be.

And the attempts by a prominent historian of Islam to ignore her, and in working behind the coulilsses to have her work ignored by others, having failed, resort to childishness (mocking that useful bit of lexicogeny, "dhimmitude," by calling it "dhimmi-tude"), based partly one suspects on envy that someone else, someone entirely independent of the usual channels, studied the history of that Biggest Story Never Told, the story of Non-Muslims under Islam, that had been so minimized (with the fate of Christians ignored) by the celebrated authority in question, and told it.

Posted by: Hugh at February 9, 2006 9:10 AM

They should have ask that question in Iraq to the Iraqis.It would have been interesting to see what the % of Iraqis stand on this.

Posted by: RED at February 9, 2006 3:05 PM

The above charts are also pictorially slightly misleading. One needs to add the lilac and burgundy bars to get the total of the pro-Shariah crowd - once one does that, Jordan, Syria, "Palestine" and Egypt are 90%, while Lebanon is close to 50%.

And Ispanan, that's exactly what we expect if the Muslim Brotherhood, FIS, MMA, or other such parties come to power in their respective countries. And yes, we wouldn't be surprised if Hamas adapted it as well.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at February 9, 2006 9:02 PM

Jordan seems to be one of the worst in the polls even though the seemingly modern king and queen appear rational. The people in their country obviously don't think like they do.

And why shouldn't anyone think sharia will be what it has always been?
http://www.fomi.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?

Posted by: Borg at February 9, 2006 10:06 PM

Hmm, that link doesn't seem to be the photo gallery that it was. Faith Freedom's gallery has some of the same photos. Go there.

Posted by: Borg at February 9, 2006 10:15 PM

http://www.faithfreedom.org/Gallery/5.htm

Posted by: Borg at February 9, 2006 10:17 PM

http://www.fomi.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1627&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=150

Posted by: Borg at February 9, 2006 10:36 PM

Polls have always been spun or ignored, or are slanted and inaccurate, UNTIL the election box shows that the polls are decisively wrong. For instance, everyone was surprised in the U.S. when Pro-Life and creationists Republicans won elected office a lot--enough to oust the Democrats from power. Only then did they go back to their public opinion polls to see what they did wrong--not only in the U.S., but on both sides of the Atlantic.

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=581
While many in the scientific community may question why this issue has been raised again, a new national survey shows that almost two-thirds
of U.S. adults (64%) agree with the basic tenet of creationism, that "human beings were created directly by God."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm

[snip]
Over 2,000 participants took part in the survey, and were asked what best described their view of the origin and development of life:
22% chose creationism
17% opted for intelligent design
48% selected evolution theory
and the rest did not know.
[snip]
The findings prompted surprise from the scientific community. Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, said: "It is surprising
that many should still be sceptical of Darwinian evolution. Darwin proposed his theory nearly 150 years ago, and it is now supported by an immense weight of evidence.

"We are, however, fortunate compared to the US in that no major segment of UK religious or cultural life opposes the inclusion of evolution in the school science curriculum." [snip]

Posted by: markjames at February 9, 2006 10:36 PM

I fail to comprehend why posters such as the one above are so relentless in their drive to bring such matter up -- What possible relevance do his various points have regarding the Islamic Jihad, or the preference which this poll suggest that exists among Muslims for Sharia...

Is he trying to allege that there is no such preference among Muslims? He states "Polls have always been spun or ignored, or are slanted and inaccurate, UNTIL the election box shows that the polls are decisively wrong."

If he follows his own logic, then what does he make of Hamas' electoral victory in Gaza and the West Bank? -- THEY support Sharia unconditionally -- If he follows his own logic, then what does he make of The Muslim Brotherhood's electoral victory in Egypt? -- THEY support Sharia unconditionally -- of the electoral victories of the Islamists in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan -- all of these are victories for Sharia --

As such, the poll above hardly seems to be dubious or suspicious...

And poster, I would ask what is your intention bringing up this OT "issue" of religiosity and Darwin in America? On the face of it, your post is illogical, and it's reasonable to infer that you may be posting for an ulterior agenda -- to (yet once again) attempt to indict and bash America for embracing their Christian religiosity... In light of the topic of this thread, your choice to include these "snips" makes it appear like you were more intent on taking a snipe than making a cogent point.

Posted by: jsla at February 10, 2006 4:20 PM

It would be VERY interesting to know at least three more things, at least one of which was already addressed by another poster upthread (if more than one I apologize for missing you):
1) what the exact wording of the questions was;
2) under what conditions the questions were asked;
and, most important,
3) exactly what specific, detailed definitions and manifestations of "sharia" the respondents envisioned.
Never having been to the ME and having ZERO Muslim friends/acquaintances, I'm not qualified even to speculate.
But it woud be interesting to compare the performance of, say, a question here in the US, or in the West generally, along the lines of "Should Biblical law be A source, the SOLE sourcce, or NO source of OUR laws?"
On that, I WOULD speculate -- and, for that matter, bet a whole LOT of money that our responses in the affirmative would be similar in number and distribution... even as I doubt too many people would agree that what they MEANT was that no pork or shellfish should be allowed by law to be consumed; the corners of the hair must not be cut; no cloth of mixed fibers be worn; the observance of the Sabbath Day be strictly maintained by law, with all businesses and entertainments but those necessary to maintain life shut down; etcetcetc.
The devil is, as always, in the details.

Posted by: smartalek at February 10, 2006 10:53 PM