Of these survey results, Paladiea says:
Well according to this it shows that the vast majority of Eurpoean Muslims would NEVER consider it as a tactic, and the majority of those in Pakistan, Indonesia and Turkey are against it as well. Also, a large chunk of people would only consider it an option in rare curcumstances. Hardly a condemning view of Islam don’t you think?(...)I would be interested to know how that question would turn out if it were asked to Christians though.
I'm not one to make blanket statements about Islam or Muslims. And I understand that Paladiea is trying to refute the notion that most Muslims are in favour of suicide bombing. I get that.
But these numbers are not reassuring.
I note that the respondents had the choice between "Sometimes", "Rarely" and "Never". What if we re-worded the choices to include "Most of the time" and "always". I'm just curious.
Some of the results are frightening. Look at Jordan, Egypt and Nigeria. 46% of Nigerian Muslims say suicide bombings are sometimes okay? I haven't heard of too many Nigerians involved in suicide bombings, though.
If you add the "Sometimes" and "Rarely" together, it's even more disturbing. In France, if you put both together, that's about a third of the popularion. In Spain, it's a quarter. Same in Britain. In Nigeria, it's about 70% of the population.
The information is vague-- who knows what "rarely" means? Still.
I think it's fair to ask what the results would be if Christians were asked the same question. Still, I don't know of any Christian suicide bombings. If there are any substantial numbers of Christians in the world who think suicide bombings are okay, not many of them have acted on that belief.
What this shows is that while most Muslims in most countries oppose suicide bombings, a substantial number of them do support its use. This bears further investigation, but it seems to me that this does not bode well.
I'd like to further note that these particular results do not break down according to religiosity. That could also influence the results. It'd be interesting to see whether religious devotion has an effect on one's opinion of suicide bombing.
