isn't the following essay worthy? your opinion, please? (i think it's one of the best.)

http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/single/2369/

Posted by: StillBreathing at May 23, 2007 7:08 AM

"...all too often they end up embracing the ideology of Islamic supremacism as it is taught by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence...."

...taught, as in a mosque by crazed bearded fingerpointing Islamic clerics, perhaps?....

Posted by: exsgtbrown at May 23, 2007 7:15 AM

Survey Finds US Muslims Mostly Mainstream by Jim Lobe

"Similarly, a plurality (48 percent) of Muslim Americans also said they believed the war in Afghanistan was a mistake, compared to less than 30 percent of the general public."

"Only 22 percent (of Arab born Muslims) said they believed that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks, compared to 40 percent of all Muslim Americans."

The response on this question is like the leading indicator in business cycle prediction. The response on "Is suicide bombing ever justified" is a lagging indicator. Also, some Muslims may not accept the term suicide bombing to describe 9-11, 7-7, etc. The Pew survey may not be a culturally valid survey for Muslims, especially non-convert Muslims.

A better question might have been: Is it ever justified to kill non-Muslims? Is it ever justified to kill non-Muslims in the United States?

The following argues that the Left is attracted to Islam precisely because it is a non-Western religion. Leftist awakenings have a track record of wanting to get rid of the people who embody the old culture. The above survey, to the true leftist, may be good news. It shows that Muslim immigration is working, it is creating irreversible change in culture by changing the people.

Kennedy Leftist Awakening: Irreversible Change by Immigration

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 7:30 AM

"Now, on another subject…
Q.H1 Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified? April 2006 April 2006."

This question leads in with suicide bombing, so it spoils the question for those who don't consider 9-11 suicide bombing.

Pew Survey page 97

The don't know or refuse to respond were 9 percent.

Often was 1 percent and sometimes 7. This is all respondents, not broken down by age as in graph at start of article.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 7:50 AM

In the UK we have three main centrist political parties - the LibLabCon trick - whose aim is to perpetuate the flawed doctrine of multiculturalism. These parties love Muslims (or rather, they love their votes) and when a jihadist commits a violent act in the name of Islam, Muslims are portrayed as victims with whom we must empathise.

The voters have no choice. If they feel that their views are more in tune with the BNP's then they dare not say so for fear of being ostracised as racists, fascists, Nazis, Islamophobes, bigots etc.

So what hope is there? Only that over time more and more people will see Islam for what it really is and that politicians will finally start to listen. Unfortunately, none of the following - all of which are required - will happen in the foreseeable future:

• restrictions on Muslim immigration
• restrictions on Muslims' freedom of movement
• closing down of mosques
• condemnation of Islam by "mainstream" politicians
• a rethink of multiculturalism

Posted by: watling at May 23, 2007 7:53 AM

"Q.H3 Do you believe that groups of Arabs carried out the attacks against the United States on
September 11 2001, or don’t you believe this?"

From page 97. 40 percent believe, 28 percent do not, and 32 percent don't know or declined to answer.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 7:53 AM

"A better question might have been: Is it ever justified to kill non-Muslims..."

My thoughts exactly. To object to suicide bombing may only be a reflection on the muslims view of suicide rather than the murderous intent.

As we all know, those imitators of Muhammad have not yet figured out how to kill without doing themselves in as well.

Is this going to be a new question on U.S. naturalization forms:

Have you ever been, are you now, or will you ever be a suicide bomber?
__ Yes __No (Check one)

-XRDC

Posted by: XRDC at May 23, 2007 7:55 AM

What ever happened to the ‘Melting Pot Theory’ that was taught extensively in pre-70’s America?? Seems to me assimilation was the core of this socially cohesive doctrine not worshipful adherence to the ‘cult of multi-culturalism’ as Tom Tancredo so aptly terms it. Through our PC induced blindness we now have a sizable, rabid muslim subculture sprinkled liberally amongst us waiting to conquer the earth for their demon moon-god, allah. This dangerous ’25 %’ figure did not materialize on it’s own but through willful and conscious PC ignorance on our part and I am ashamed of this once vibrant and dynamic nation.

Posted by: descendantofacrusader at May 23, 2007 7:56 AM

All these reported polls today about Islamic beliefs and values during the first triple crown! Islamic suicide murders in three different countries on the same day: Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq! On the same day! The precision of this evil cult and its synchronization is mind boggling. What a wonderful religion! Ban it now!

Posted by: David England at May 23, 2007 7:56 AM

quote page 98

Q.H5 Overall, do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Al Qaeda? [IF FAVORABLE,
FOLLOW WITH: And is that very favorable or only somewhat favorable? IF
UNFAVORABLE, FOLLOW WITH: and is that very unfavorable or only somewhat
unfavorable?]
1 Very favorable
4 Somewhat favorable
10 Somewhat unfavorable
58 Very unfavorable
27 Don’t know/Refused (VOL.)

end quote

The 27 don't know refused to respond should be considered very interesting. Saying yes might get you in trouble if the government is listening in or if the government seized the records or somehow got them from Pew.

The 10 somewhat unfavorable and 58 Very unfavorable should be considered in that light as well. Actual al Qaeda members may tend to be in the 58 very unfavorable to protect their cover.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 7:59 AM

Page 79 (of pdf)

Totals
Total phone numbers used 8320
Completed full interviews (1.0) 553
Screen-out short interviews (1.1) 1230
Partial Interviews (1.2) 50
Refusal and break off (2.1) 1916
Non Contact (2.2) 810
Other (2.3) 508

Reaching younger Muslims by phone survey in proportion to their views may be difficult beyond these response rate indications. Pages before and after 79 also discuss survey and response rate issues.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 8:19 AM

"83% of interviews were conducted in English, 11% in Arabic, 3% in Farsi, and 3% in Urdu."

Page 77 of pdf.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 8:22 AM

Why did no one check the math on this stuff? This looks like a two year old did it. Why is every column 112% or 119%? Or am I reading this wrong? Near as I can tell when you add all the collumns, they do not add up to 100%.

Posted by: Paratisi at May 23, 2007 8:28 AM

Paratisi, In the table at top, the graphic, the first column, "ever justified", sums the next two. The DK, don't know, column is squeezed in on right.
Sum across rows to get 100.

"Incentive.................. $50 for completed interview with qualified respondent"

Page 71 of pdf

The incentive to do the survey may mean that people didn't want to indicate support of terrorism, al Qaeda, etc. The interviews done in English may have a different meaning than those done in other languages.

Page 76 of pdf, Arabic was 11 percent.

Some people will not answer questions about these things with strangers accurately and not in English. But they might give the "correct" answers for 50 dollars.

This economic incentive issue undermines the validity of the survey. The response rate issue is another problem.

Note that the survey was found from RDD, random digit dialing, but also there is discussion calling back responders of prior surveys. I haven't finished reading that.

Note this comment from page 63 of 108

"In random digit dial (RDD) surveys of the English-speaking U.S. population, roughly one-half of one percent of respondents typically identify themselves as Muslim in response to a question about religious tradition or affiliation"

The survey results have substantially underestimated the extremism. This is typical of Pew work. They get results they want.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 8:40 AM

See chart page 74 of pdf to get a better idea of the issues in the sample design and response rates.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 8:43 AM

"Due to the complex design of the Muslim American study, formulas commonly used in RDD surveys to estimate margins of error (standard errors) are inappropriate. Such formulas would understate the true variability in the estimates. Accordingly, we used a repeated replication technique, specifically jackknife repeated replication (JRR), to calculate the standard errors for this study.
Repeated replication techniques estimate the variance of a survey statistic based on the variance between sub-sample estimates of that statistic. The sub-samples (replicates) were created using the same sample design, but deleting a portion of the sample, and then weighting each subsample up to the population total."

They then move on to bias. It should be understood that they had 1,050 respondents in the end that they used, see page 71 of pdf. Bias and statistical error they are treating separately. In fact, the issue of sampling bias is so substantial that their estimates of statistical error are not that meaningful.

Page 63 of pdf:

"After taking into
account the complex sample design, the average margin of sampling error on the 1,050
completed interviews with Muslims is +/-5 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence."

This is the statistical error based on jackknifing it appears they are saying. But this ignores the issue of sample bias or other bias problems from fear of saying al Qaeda is good, etc. The jackknifing doesn't really resolve the real issues in estimating their total error.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 8:52 AM

Just to emphasize, jackknifing can not estimate the statistical error from bias in who was sampled or their filtering their own responses to be what Americans want to hear. Moreover, for young Arab men, their sample size is becoming small. They have 1,050 total in their sample. So by the time they get down to young Arab men its likely not a large sample.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 8:59 AM

The chart above is not young Arab Muslim men but young Muslims, I mentioned young Arab men because that subgroup is of particular importance to be understood, not because the chart at the top of the page is about them.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 9:01 AM

“American Muslims Reject Extremes”
-USA Today Headline

Of course young Muslims support suicide bombings in larger numbers than their parents.

1. Most have not lived in the hell-holes that an Islamic society produces and find it hard to grasp the consequences of the realities of the words of Mohammed. They instead play their I-Pods and are attracted to the ‘purity’ of Islam.
2. Because they largely reject Western society, Western society largely rejects them. This trend will continue and probably accelerate.
3. The words of the Qu'ran mandate violence against the infidels. If the question would have been about non-suicide bombings, the percentage probably would have been higher as suicide is frowned upon but violence against infidels is mandated. Words have meanings.

What percentage of the respondents feared an FBI sting and gave the 'correct' answer? The 'Pop' will either be a WMD device, or chaos following the bankruptcy of the social safety net.

Posted by: pez at May 23, 2007 9:06 AM

CNNs AC 360 had Beck and some Muslims on last night. Of course the muslim quickly pointed out the poll shows the "majority" of US muslims don't support suicide bombings.

So there's only a few hundred thousand to worry about. Now, I feel so much better.

A recent poll in Canada revealed 12% believed killing Canadians was OK. I think people are intimidated by polls and the numbers of jihadists in USA and Canada are much higher than these polls show.

But don't worry, all of these nasty polls will soon be forgoten.

Posted by: sounder at May 23, 2007 9:06 AM

Page 63 of pdf, the recontact sample was 163 of the 1050. So 887 were random digit dial (RDD) and 163 they recontacted. Why and when did that happen?

quote

Perhaps most obviously, since all of the previous surveys from which the recontact frame was drawn were conducted either entirely in English, or in English and Spanish, Muslims who do not speak English (or Spanish) are likely absent in the recontact frame. Another potential source of bias relates to the length of time between when respondents were first interviewed and the current field period; respondents still residing in the same household in 2007 as in an earlier year may represent a more established, less mobile population compared with those from households that could not be recontacted.

Analysis of the survey results suggests that there are some differences between Muslims in the recontact frame and those in the RDD frame. Not surprisingly, Muslims from the recontact frame are more likely than others to own their home. They express somewhat higher levels of satisfaction with their own financial situations, report lower levels of mosque attendance and religious salience, and express somewhat higher levels of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country. These differences, however, are not sufficiently large so as to be able to substantially affect the survey’s estimates.

end quote

What this means is that they got the wrong results with the RDD survey? So they decided to take out an old survey of "safe houses" and added those in to dilute out the radicals? It also means that the newer immigrants have more radical views? The RDD picks up a few people who came since the last survey. By definition, the recontact can't.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 9:19 AM

The recontact sample was

1) English or Spanish speaking

2) owned their own home, or tended to

3) were in the same place for several years

4) didn't go to Mosque as much

So its possible that they did the RDD survey first, got extreme results and then went to a sample with the above 4 characteristics. They already knew that was the characteristics of the recontact sample presumably. So it looks like they were watering down the extremist response with safe responses.

"Despite the challenges, the Pew study was able to complete interviews with 1,050 Muslim American adults 18 years old and older from a probability sample consisting of two sampling frames. Interviews were conducted by telephone between January 24 and April 30, 2007 by the research firm of Schulman, Ronca & Bucuvalas, Inc. (SRBI)." PDF page 63.

Pew pushes Hispanic immigration. The RDD survey was done starting in Jan 24. The Kennedy Immigration bill is up now, and the White House released its harsher bill terms around the end of March 2007. Those are posted at one site with a date of March 30, 2007.

It may be that Pew realized it was about to release a survey from RDD that showed extremist Muslim attitudes. So then they went back to get the recontact sample to water down the extremism the RDD picked up. This may then have delayed the results coming out. Pew may be trying to push a pro immigration result to help the Kennedy immigration amnesty bill.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 9:39 AM

I'm no polling expert, but I find the absence of under-18 data really disconcerting.

Posted by: longtime lurker at May 23, 2007 9:39 AM

Right on Robert.

When one hears "multicult" why does one instinctively reach for one's gun ?

Posted by: dgene at May 23, 2007 9:45 AM

The random digit dial, RDD, sample was lower income relative to the recontact. But the RDD sample was paid 50 dollars as were the others. The recontact sample had their own homes, didn't go to mosque as much, etc. So the RDD sample pushed down extreme response because people would take 50 dollars to give answers Pew wanted, non-extreme to help the immigration bill.

But that didn't do it enough, so they may have delayed the release to do the recontact sample after the RDD results were extreme. That then pushed down the extreme answers. They had to get this out in time for the immigration bill.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at May 23, 2007 9:46 AM

First Two Questions should have been:

1) Do you think it is legitimate for Muslims to lie to infidels for strategic reasons?

2) Would you tell the truth if you felt that it endangered Islam to do so?

Let's get the respondants' real worldview out in front before you pretend that the rest of their answers have any chance at honestly or ultimate validity.

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 23, 2007 11:10 AM

profitsbeard

You need to read between the lines. I thought that the answers that PEW did extract are revealing. Particularly the howler on pg 96 QG2, where 69% of Mohammedans think that Islam treats men and women equally well, and another 2% that actually thinks that Islam treats women better.

Read it again. Pg 81 to 108. It's good for a few laughs!

Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 23, 2007 1:01 PM