Muslims want religion in politics
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- Published on Sunday, 05 December 2010 05:41
- Written by John Draper
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A survey by the Pew Forum has found that the general public in Muslim countries overwhelmingly welcomes Islamic influence over their countries' politics. Strangely, at the same time, most also said that democracy is preferable to any other kind of government with the smallest majority for this in Pakistan. There are a large number of items surveyed including the unsurprising positive attitude by most to Hamas and Hezbollah and the slowly dropping approval of suicide bombers.
Also interesting is that Muslims have noticed that fundamentalists want to stop their countries from modernising yet they still mostly approve of cutting off hands and stoning as punishments. Not all Muslim countries were surveyed - Iran and Iraq are conspicuous by their absence.
I prefer to see the tables and graphs rather than prose so I have collected the most interesting of these below. I left out details on how they loved Hamas and Hezbollah - that's not news! If you want to see the whole report, click here
Muslims were asked if they saw Islam having a large role in their existing government. They were then asked whether this was positive or negartive.
Muslims do not see democracys as being incompatible with barbaric treatment. I guess if everyone votes to be a barbarian, then it's still a democracy! Westerners tend to mean a kinder form of government when they say "democracy".
Trend in attitude on suicide bombers
All very interesting - but nothing unexpected.