Is this article supposed to impugn Islam?...because it doesn’t. If the number were much higher, say, 50% want Sharia to be the basis of U.S. law then I’d have a problem. When you consider that less than 1% of U.S. citizens are muslims, the bigger threat is still from terrorist attacks rather than some popular transformation of the country through democratic ation.
You’re probably correct. Islam is a missionary religion with a claim to exclusive theological truth. How could they not think their values should prevail? If the numbers are accurate, they’re proof that Muslims lie to pollsters. Also likely pollsters are lying to the rest of us.
90% are lying.
See also al taqiyya.
Actually, you are drawing that line over the wrong object.
Properly expressed you should have started out, in light of the argument you presented, “Is this article supposed to impugn Muslims?”
This is because it is Muslim-in-America attitudes about Islamic Law that is being gauged, their self-professed assessment of what Islam requires of them, and not if their opinions on that subject of advancing Islamic Law are really accurate or not.
If you wish to protest that you cannot separate Muslims from Islam or Islam from Muslims, and leave Muslims saying they’re fine without Sharia (assuming they aren’t lying of course), then you have to demonstrate that those saying they would be wrong are themselves wrong, and that Islam doesn’t demand it be the only basis for laws anywhere and everywhere.
By contrast, all you have to prove by allowing for schisms in Islam over the matter of Islamic Law, without judging the validity of those schisms, is to simply acknowledge that they exist.
IOW, it’s a much easier row to hoe to rephrase the first sentence as I’ve done.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to delve into the validity of different stances over Islamic Law, how it should or shouldn’t be advanced in particular, just that for casual comments the above is a sound stance.