08 June 2017

Can polls really reveal what British Muslims think about terrorism?

Surveys on extremism can lead to some disturbing headlines, but they don't always tell the full story.

.... One of the most recent large-scale surveys of social attitudes within British Muslim communities, carried out for Channel 4 by ICM in 2016, found one per cent "completely" sympathised with people who took part in suicide bombings to "fight injustice", while three per cent had "sympathy to some extent".

Meanwhile, 0.5 per cent said they fully sympathised with those who committed terrorist acts to further a political cause, while another 3.5 per cent had "some sympathy".

However, ICM's methodology came under fire from the Muslim Council of Britain, who said the poll's sampling meant it was not representative of the British Muslim community as a whole.

Writing in The Guardian, Miqdaad Versi, the council's chief, said that by choosing to question people only in areas where at least a fifth of the local population was Muslim, the survey was skewed toward "poor and religiously conservative" Pakistani and Bangladeshi enclaves. [The Week] Read more