Quarter of British Muslims sympathise with Charlie Hebdo terrorists

Quarter of British Muslims sympathise with Charlie Hebdo terrorists

Some 27 per cent of British Muslims sympathise with Paris gunmen, while more than one in ten say satirical cartoons "deserve" to be attacked

One in four British Muslims sympathise with terrorists behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks, a new poll shows.
A poll reveals how a significant minority of Muslims endorse terrorist atrocities against those who mock the Prophet Mohammed.
Some 27 per cent of British Muslims said they have "some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks" on the Paris magazine, according to polling by ComRes for the BBC.
A further 32 per cent said they were not surprised by the attacks. Some 11 per cent said that magazines which publish images of the Prophet Mohammed "deserve to be attacked."
And only 68 per cent of British Muslims said that attacks on the publishers of images of the Prophet are "never" justified, while 24 disagreed.

A strong majority - 78 per cent - said they find depictions of the Prophet "deeply offensive to me personally".
Some 12 people were killed and 11 wounded in an attack by two Islamist terrorists at the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7. The magazine had published satirical images of the Prophet.
At the same time, the polling shows a high degree of loyalty to Britain, with 95 per cent saying they feel loyal, and 93 per cent saying British laws should always be obeyed.

However, some 20 per cent say Western society is incompatible with Islam, 46 per cent say British is becoming less tolerant of Muslims and prejudice against Islam makes it "very difficult" being Muslim in Britain. Of those polled, 35 per cent said they did not feel British people trust Muslims.
Baroness Warsi, the former Foreign Office minister, said the level of sympathy for the motives behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks was "worrying".
She said the decision to abandon an annual survey of different communities across the UK as part of cost-cutting had left Whitehall without the comparative detail needed to understand sentiment.
"One of the problems we have had in relation to good policy-making around our minority communities is that it has become headline-driven, it has become sensationalist and it is therefore not dealing with the long-term problem in a calm way."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rel...sympathise-with-Charlie-Hebdo-terrorists.html

 

Over a quarter of British Muslims have sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo terrorists. That is far too many
Just because you wouldn't personally go out and murder people, it doesn't make you moderate. We cannot turn a blind eye to the fair-weather supporters of terrorism

This morning the BBC published details of a major poll of the attitudes of Britain’s Muslims. The headline on the front of the BBC website linking to the research states: “Muslims ‘oppose cartoon reprisals’”. This of course relates to attitudes within the Muslim community towards the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks.
It’s a reassuring headline. It’s also wrong. Many Muslims - a majority - do indeed utterly oppose the murderous killings in Paris. But a very, very large number of Muslims don’t. Presented with the statement “I have some sympathy for the motives behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris”, 27 seven percent agreed with the statement. A further 2 per cent refused to answer the question. And an additional eight percent said they were unsure whether they had some sympathy or not.
That is a shocking figure. And an utterly shaming one for Britain’s Muslim community. If this poll is accurate, over a quarter of British Muslims overtly sympathise with the motives of those responsible for the cold blooded murder of 16 journalists, police officers and Jews.

Below the report is an article by BBC Today program reporter Sima Kotecha. It begins: “Islam is a religion of peace and love - not violence: sentiments that have been expressed numerous times here in Bradford. Out of the dozens of people I've spoken to, an overwhelming majority have said they're angry that their interpretation of Islam has been eclipsed by an extreme ideology that is too often projected in the media."

That statement - and those sentiments - are simply not compatible with the BBC’s own research. In a separate finding, the BBC found 68 per cent of Muslims believed “acts of violence against those who published such images [of the prophet Mohammed] could never be justified”. Which means 32 per cent of those questioned take a different view. Another question asked respondents if they agreed with the statement “Muslim clerics who preach that violence against the West can be justified are out of touch with mainstream opinion”. 49 per cent agreed. Meaning again, that a majority of Muslims either disagree or sit on the fence.

All of this raises two serious questions. The first relates to the BBC’s reporting. Let’s set aside their use of the word “reprisal” in the headline (reprisal for what, exactly?). Imagine if the BBC had commissioned a poll in the wake of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and that poll had found 27 per cent of white Britons agreed with the statement “I have some sympathy for the motives behind his stabbing”. Imagine if, in an additional finding, 32 per cent of white Briton’s refused to endorse the statement “acts of unprovoked violence against black men can never be justified”.
Rightly, there would be outrage at those findings. And the BBC would be leading the charge. The focus, correctly, would be on the large number of people who expressed sympathy with the attacks. We would certainly not have religious propaganda masquerading as news analysis in the middle of the BBC’s report.
But a much fundamental question relates to the poll’s actual findings. There is no point continuing to stick our heads in the sand: a large number of British Muslims think the Charlie Hebdo attacks were in some way justified. People may not want to accept that. I don’t want to accept it. But it’s a fact.

We are going to have to start to reassess what we mean by “moderate Islam”. At the moment, we essentially define a moderate Muslim as any Muslim who doesn’t go around blowing things up, or who doesn’t go round overtly advocating other people should blow things up. It’s ludicrously simplistic, sickeningly patronising, and actually represents a form of inverted racism.
More importantly, it also has the practical effect of marginalising and undermining the significant number of genuinely moderate Muslims who want nothing to with the “I wouldn’t have done it myself, but…” Charlie Hebdo apologists within their community.
If you think the Paris killings were justified - in any way - then you’re not a moderate. By definition, you’re an extremist. Fine, you’re not a terrorist. But just because you wouldn’t personally walk into a Jewish supermarket and start indiscriminately murdering people does not of itself make you a case study in moderation. We set the bar a little higher than that.
Over a quarter of British Muslims have some sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo attacks. That is sickening, reprehensible and unacceptable. And we have to say so. Rather than patting the other three quarters who don’t have sympathy on the head, and saying “Well done. You’re the good Muslims”.

Two weeks ago I took part in a debate on free speech, hosted by the Islamic Education and Research Academy. It was a good discussion, well attended, with an almost exclusively Muslim audience. Near the end, one audience member began to defend the killing of apostates. I challenged him, as did the other non-Muslim panelists. None of the Muslim panelists challenged him. No members of the audience challenged him. Instead, when he’d finished defending the murder of apostates, a significant section of the audience applauded him.
It’s not good enough. It’s not good for people inside and outside the Muslim community to continue to turn a blind eye to the extremism that continues to fester in the heart of the Muslim community. It’s not good enough for Muslims to keep delivering vacuous homilies about “the religion of peace” when surveys show 27 per cent of Muslims have sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo murderers. And it’s not good enough for us to deploy spurious moral relativism in a misguided attempt to place extremism behind a shield of religious tolerance.
The BBC is wrong. Many Muslims have sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo killings. Far too many.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rel...e-Hebdo-terrorists.-That-is-far-too-many.html

 

No.

Any comment on the fact that over a quarter of UK Muslims sides with the Islamist murderers of 16 journalists, police officers and Jews?

 

I don't understand how people cannot understand how this is worrying?

It actually falls in line with previous polls:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...tudents-killing-Islam-40-want-Sharia-law.html

The latest WikiLeaks revelation: 1 in 3 British Muslim students back killing for Islam and 40% want Sharia law

Around a third of young British Muslims favour killing in the name of Islam, according to a survey revealed by the WikiLeaks' publication of U.S. diplomatic cables.
A survey of 600 Muslim students at 30 universities throughout Britain found that 32 per cent of Muslim respondents believed killing in the name of religion is justified.
A U.S. diplomatic cable from January 2009 quoted a poll by the Centre for Social Cohesion as saying 54 per cent wanted a Muslim party to represent their world view in Parliament and 40 per cent want Muslims in the UK to be under Sharia law.

The survey results, revealed by WikiLeaks' release of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, suggests increasing radicalisation among Britain's young Muslims.
A further U.S. cable, dated February 5 2009, said reaching out to Britain's Muslim community there was a 'top priority' for U.S. embassy staff.

It stated: 'Although people of Muslim faith make up only 3 to 4 per cent of the UK's population, outreach to this key audience is vital to U.S. foreign policy interests in the UK and beyond... This is a top mission priority.'
The February cable outlined a plan encompassing 'engagement and community capacity-building' to counter the possible growth of 'violent extremism' in the UK.
The outreach plan for British Muslims was published a month after a cable that revealed that while the community had grown to more than 2 million, unemployment rates were higher among Muslim men and women than in any other religion.

Muslims were also found to have the highest disability rates - with 24 per cent of men and 21 per cent of women claiming a disability - while the cable also cited statistics claiming Muslims were also the most likely group to be unavailable for work or not actively seeking employment due to illness, their studies or family commitments.
It was revealed last week that a U.S. cable from 2006 had suggested the British Government had made 'little progress' in engaging Muslims and combating homegrown extremism.
And the latest cable revelations of U.S. ambassadorial plan to empower Muslim communities to 'mobilize against extremism' and 'build community resilience' confirms the White House's lack of faith in the British Government's ability to engage with the UK's Islamic population.

 

You are disgusting.