Is the ''Only a minority of Muslims are radical'' true?

[TheMessiah]

Before a certain someone says ''right wing source (2nd link), invalid'' I will point out that the article was written by a Muslim, journalist Abul Taher.

Right, as usual you don't dig any deeper than the original article. I'm not surprised actually. But I took the liberty to look up the actual study of this professor Kamaldeep Bhui, they are talking about in the independent article. That's the rather interesting bit about it, since it talks about 2 point fucking 4 percent of the sample group having radical ideas.

Results

2.4% of people showed some sympathy for violent protest and terrorist acts. Sympathy was more likely to be articulated by the under 20s, those in full time education rather than employment, those born in the UK, those speaking English at home, and high earners (>£75,000 a year). People with poor self-reported health were less likely to show sympathies for violent protest and terrorism. Anxiety and depressive symptoms, adverse life events and socio-political attitudes showed no associations.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article...ne.0090718

There goes your majority claim down the toilet.

Secondly, you probably know of the general bias of the dailymail. Also, you probably didn't check up on the background of the only person, who is interviewed by this Taher character: Anthony Glees.

Both articlkes of course don't mention a percentage of radicals. The above study does. To repeat it, 2,4 percents.

Yeah, it's clear you haven't read my posts, and are instead arguing with an imaginary version of myself.

I did not say most Muslims sympathasize with terrorism; they don't, my claim was that many Muslims, especially in Britain believe in blasphemy and are willing to use violence --- that doesn't mean they're all Bin Laden supporters, but they are considerably more radical than the non-Muslim population. 

Furthermore, you unsurprisingly left out the conclusion of that study: Youth, wealth, and being in education rather than employment were risk factors.. It is specifically pointing out that privilege/wealth makes these people more likely to be extreme.

Here is more data to debunk the poverty claim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_te..._terrorism

According to Scott Atran, a NATO researcher studying suicide terrorism, the available evidence contradicts a number of simplistic explanations for the motivations of terrorists,[7] including mental instability, poverty, and feelings of humiliation.

Forensic psychiatrist and former foreign service officer Marc Sageman made an "intensive study of biographical data on 172 participants in the jihad," in his book Understanding Terror Networks.[8] He concluded social networks, the "tight bonds of family and friendship", rather than emotional and behavioral disorders of "poverty, trauma, madness, [or] ignorance", inspired alienated young Muslims to join the jihad and kill.[9]

Author Lawrence Wright described the characteristic of "displacement" of members of the most famous Islamic terrorist group, al-Qaeda:

What the recruits tended to have in common – besides their urbanity, their cosmopolitan backgrounds, their education, their facility with languages, and their computer skills – was displacement. Most who joined the jihad did so in a country other than the one in which they were reared. They were Algerians living in expatriate enclaves in France,Moroccans in Spain, or Yemenis in Saudi Arabia. Despite their accomplishments, they had little standing in the host societies where they lived."[10]

Scholar Olivier Roy describes the background of the hundreds of global (as opposed to local) terrorists who were incarcerated or killed and for whom authorities have records, as being surprising for their Westernized background; for the lack of Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans "coming to avenge what is going on in their country"; their lack of religiosity before being "born again" in a foreign country; the high percentage of converts to Islam among them; their "de-territorialized backgrounds" – "For instance, they may be born in a country, then educated in another country, then go to fight in a third country and take refuge in a fourth country"; their nontraditional belief that jihad is permanent, global, and "not linked with a specific territory."[11]

The claim of poverty is not only being debunked in academic circles but it is an attempt, probably intentional to move away focus from Islam as an ideology - it utterly fails to explain why the elite in Islamic countries support terrorism (e.g. Saudi, Iran, Pakistan) or why militant Islamic groups are led by rich men.