Pew Research Institute Releases Telling Survey of World's Muslims

radicalislam.org ^ | 14AUG12 | Clare M. Lopez

[bayouranger]

Recent results of the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life multi-year survey of beliefs and practices by the world’s Muslims that were published 8 August 2012 are remarkable in a number of respects. First of all, the broad scope of the project—based on 38,000 face-to-face interviews conducted with Muslims in 39 different countries and territories—ensured a wide range of opinions from a diverse sampling of Muslim communities.

The results, however, show a high level of agreement about one of the most debated issues concerning Islam: Whether Muslims believe Islamic teaching is subject to various “interpretations” or only one. As Islamic teaching is derived from the Qur’an, the Sira, and the ahadith (which together are the main sources for Sharia, or Islamic law), in essence this was a question about Muslim beliefs about the fundamentals of their faith.

According to the Pew survey results, a majority (more than 50%) of Muslims in 32 of 39 countries believes that “There is only one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.”

The highest levels of agreement with that statement were found in places perhaps not expected to score at or above the 75% mark: Bosnia-Herzegovina (in the heart of Europe) and Tajikistan (in Central Asia). Three of the most populous Muslim countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan—all scored above 70% agreement on the oneness of Islamic doctrine, a level of orthodoxy that tracks well with Pakistan’s jihadist image, but may come as a jolt to those who still think that Islam’s East Asian strongholds are somehow more willing to diverge from core Islamic doctrine than their Middle Eastern co-religionists.

In fact, Indonesian Muslims’ 72% level of agreement that there is “only one true way to interpret” Islam places them just a few points behind Egypt and Jordan, with 78% and 76%, respectively. It was the Sub-Saharan African Muslims who posted the strongest display of Sharia adherence, however: All 16 survey countries from Mali and Nigeria in West Africa to Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania in the east scored above the 50% mark of agreement on the “one true” interpretation question.

Of course, Tawhid, meaning the oneness of Allah, the oneness of belief, and the oneness of the Muslim ummah, is a core identifying concept of Islam that would not come as a surprise to those who have studied authoritative Islamic doctrine.

The new Pew survey was conducted among global Muslims, but did not include interviews of American Muslims. The Institute, however, has conducted earlier, similar surveys among U.S. Muslims, specifically in 2007 and 2011.

The August 2011 “Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism” report stands out for the mind-boggling statistic that shows only 26% of all Muslims in America see themselves as American first, while nearly double that number (49%) see themselves as Muslim first and American second. An additional 18% see themselves as both American and Muslim equally.

There’s another wake-up call in the August 2011 U.S. survey, where Pew asked essentially the same question about American Muslims’ views on the “ways to interpret the teachings of Islam” as in the 2012 global survey. By a 57% to 37% margin, American Muslims said there was more than one way.

Of the minority (37%) who thought there was only one way to interpret Islamic teaching, however, native U.S.-born Muslims were more likely to believe there was only one way to interpret Islam than the foreign-born immigrant Muslims! Put another way, native-born American citizen Muslims are far more likely to be rigid about their Islamic faith than Muslim immigrants—by a whopping 46% to 31% margin.

This finding means that the Salafist indoctrination efforts of Muslim Brotherhood-dominated madrassas, mosques and Islamic Centers across the U.S. are successful at turning out home-grown, Sharia-adherent Muslims. Additionally, it correlates well with the results of the Summer 2011 Middle East Quarterly “Mapping Sharia” study by Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi, which found that teaching at U.S. mosques is overwhelmingly (80%) of the hard core Salafi variety that advocates violence.

There is one more category of the 2012 Pew survey that deserves mention here: The number of Muslims who say that they pay zakat shows strongly in the “Yes” column. Muslims in 30 out of 39 countries responded affirmatively, that they “give a set percentage of [their] wealth to charity or the mosque.”

Assertions of adherence to this major element of the Five Pillars unsurprisingly came in above the 50% level in all but three countries (Albania, Kazakhstan, and Russia), all of which lie geographically on the periphery of the Muslim world. Muslims in nearly half (16 out of 39) of the survey countries claimed compliance with their zakat obligations at the level of 80% or above.

Once again, the Indonesian numbers ought to give pause to those who like to cite this most populous of all Muslim countries for its “moderation”: a full 98% of all Indonesian Muslims who responded to this survey told Pew that they pay their zakat. That is a remarkable level of compliance with a tax obligation that actually has no enforcement mechanism aside from societal pressure and would seem to indicate the effectiveness of that peer pressure on Muslim behavior.

Even though the wording of the questionnaire wrongly equated zakat merely with “charity,” it is highly likely that many, if not most, Muslims who participated in the Pew survey know that zakat is an obligatory annual tax levied on all Muslims and Muslim companies. Indeed, zakat is one of the Five Pillars of the Islamic belief system and one that President Obama inaccurately singled out as one of his own “obligations” as U.S. President to help support on behalf of American Muslims.

Doubtless, most Muslims know that Islamic law demands a portion of zakat tax payments go to pay for jihad (Islamic terrorism). Once again, as with their understanding that Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture are not open to flavor-of-the-week personal interpretations, Muslims everywhere are taught to fulfill their zakat tax obligation, both for charitable purposes (for Muslims only) and for jihad (warfare to spread the religion).

Taqiyya-tossing apologists for Sharia Islam may wax rhapsodic about Islam’s zakat dedication to the poor, but the same Muslims in this survey who know that both the Qur’an and Sharia forbid them from coming up with their own interpretations of Islam (Q 5:101-102), also know that one of the primary purposes of zakat is to fund those who fight fi sabilallah (in the way of Allah).

The next data release from the Pew Research Institute global survey is due out in late 2012 or early 2013 and will focus on Muslims’ social and political attitudes. Stay tuned.

[bayouranger]

This is an excerpt from a book called “Saudi Arabia & the Global Islamic Terrorist Network” via The Terror Finance Blog

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld:

Ongoing Saudi Support for Terrorism by Direct Means

The angry form of Islamism and Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia today is the soil in which anti-Western and anti-American terrorism grows.[40]

—Former CIA director R. James Woolsey

Saudi efforts to bring Wahhabi Islam to global dominance began in earnest in 1962, with the establishment of the first international Saudi charity, the Muslim World League (MWL). Influenced by exiled Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members, then-Crown Prince Faisal bin Abdul Aziz used the growing oil revenues to fund MWL, which in turn established many other Islamic charities and nonprofits that helped create the global jihadist movement we are facing today."

[bayouranger]

[bayouranger]

28 REDACTED PAGES!

[bayouranger]

[grobdriver]

Crown Prince Faisal bin Abdul Aziz used the growing oil revenues to fund MWL, which in turn established many other Islamic charities and nonprofits that helped create the global jihadist movement we are facing today.

It sucks to think that every time I fill up my truck's gas tank I help these bastards to finance a war against me and mine.

It doubly sucks to know that America's environmentalists, may God damn them every one, enable the situation by not allowing us to break the bond with the arabs and get our own oil.

It triple sucks that we, for now, have an administration that caters to the environmentalists AND the arabs.

May God damn them all to hell.

[Uncle Miltie]

Did the survey ask whether good Muslims should kill Jews when they find them?

A minor 37% of British(!) Muslims agreed Jews should be killed on sight.

Huh! With such moderation, only a few hundred million Muslims would like to kill me.

[SunkenCiv]

• Obama: "I want to make sure we end before the call to prayer"
• Iran Deploys Troops, Ballistic Missiles To Eritrea [2008]

[patriot08]

Every “moderate” Muslim is a potential terrorist.

The belief in Islam is like a tank of gasoline. It looks innocuous, until it meets the fire. For a “moderate” Muslim to become a murderous jihadist, all it takes is a spark of faith.

It is time to put an end to the charade of “moderate Islam.” There is no such thing as moderate Muslim. Muslims are either jihadists or dormant jihadists – moderate, they are not.

Ali Sini

ex-Muslim

Originator of Faith Freedom International

http://www.faithfreedom.org/

http://sheikyermami.com/2010/03/16/ali-sina-the-myth-of-moderate-islam/

[CharlesMartelsGhost]

[bunkerhill7]

Pew Research Institute Releases Telling Survey of World’s Muslim Men. Women were not allowed to speak.

[ilovesarah2012]

Wanna make your blood boil?

Read this -

Obama Hosts Iftar Dinner, Notes Thomas Jefferson’s Koran
The Romney campaign let loose with the announcement that their VP pick would soon be announced late Friday night, just as President Obama’s Iftar dinner was still settling.

Obama hosted the Ramadan dinner at the White House after sundown, serving garden salad, thyme-roasted natural chicken, farmstand vegetable ratatouille, and vanilla peach sesame halvah crunch to guests who had been fasting all day.

Attendees includes the two Muslim members of Congress, Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Andre Carson (D-Ind.). Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), whose district includes part of Dearborn, Mich., also came.

Dozens of ambassadors ranging from Nigeria to Yemen were also on the guest list.

“Thomas Jefferson once held a sunset dinner here with an envoy from Tunisia — perhaps the first Iftar at the White House — more than 200 years ago,” Obama said. President Clinton officially began the Iftar dinners, which were continued by George W. Bush.

“And some of you, as you arrived tonight, may have seen our special display, courtesy of our friends at the Library of Congress — the Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. And that’s a reminder, along with the generations of patriotic Muslims in America, that Islam — like so many faiths — is part of our national story.”

The president continued to talk about the values of Islam, including “you know that the Koran teaches, ‘Be it man or woman, each of you is equal to the other.’”

“They are entrepreneurs and lawyers, community leaders, members of our military, and Muslim American women serving with distinction in government,” Obama said. “And that includes a good friend, Huma Abedin, who has worked tirelessly in the White House, in the U.S. Senate, and most exhaustingly, at the State Department, where she has been nothing less than extraordinary in representing our country and the democratic values that we hold dear.”

“The American people owe her a debt of gratitude — because Huma is an American patriot, and an example of what we need in this country — more public servants with her sense of decency, her grace and her generosity of spirit,” he continued. “So, on behalf of all Americans, we thank you so much.”

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/08/11/obama-hosts-iftar-dinner-notes-thomas-jeffersons-koran/

Huma is an America patriot???? BARF! GAG! PUKE!

[GOPJ]

This finding means that the Salafist indoctrination efforts of Muslim Brotherhood-dominated madrassas, mosques and Islamic Centers across the U.S. are successful at turning out home-grown, Sharia-adherent Muslims.

Muslims aren't 'yearning to be free'. Muslims come here for economic reasons. There are many nice people who happen to be Muslim... good people. I've known many... But the overriding emphasis of the religion makes Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple look mainstream... ( well up until the kool-aid)

The US needs to assimilate Muslims who are here before allowing others to immigrate. We're kidding ourselves if we think this is a minor problem...

[coolbreeze]

When things start to come unraveled, our first 2 nukes should be targeted on Mecca and Medina....the biggest one right over that f**king rock.

[Pining_4_TX]

You ought to watch Stossel’s show on the myths surrounding oil and gas. Only about 20% of our oil comes from the Middle East. Most of our energy is from the US, Canada, and Mexico.

If we could get the enviro-whackos to go away, we could do even better.

The real danger from terrorism comes from bringing Muslims into the US. It’s insane to have our troops over there while welcoming the enemy in here.

[Bob]

According to the Pew survey results, a majority (more than 50%) of Muslims in 32 of 39 countries believes that “There is only one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.”

There's something so critical that's missing from the question, the question is useless. Is the "one true way" the same "true way" for Shiite, Sufi, Sunni (and any other sects) Muslims?

A Shiite Muslim can state that he believes the one true way is the way Shiites interpret them. A Sunni Muslim will state that he believes the one true way is the way the Sunnis interpret them. The survey doesn't appear to distinguish between those two opposing views.

[rockinqsranch]

BFLR

[353FMG]

Required reading for EVERY congresscritter.