the kind of responses to "terrorism" above from the right tend to generate this kind of result more reliably than any other:
Quote:
Two-thirds of Muslims consider leaving UK
Download today's poll in full (pdf)
Vikram Dodd
Tuesday July 26, 2005
The Guardian
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have thought about leaving Britain after the London bombings, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll.
The figure illustrates how widespread fears are of an anti-Muslim backlash following the July 7 bombings which were carried out by British born suicide bombers.
The poll also shows that tens of thousands of Muslims have suffered from increased Islamophobia, with one in five saying they or a family member have faced abuse or hostility since the attacks.
Police have recorded more than 1,200 suspected Islamophobic incidents across the country ranging from verbal abuse to one murder in the past three weeks. The poll suggests the headline figure is a large underestimate.
The poll came as British Islamic leaders and police met to try to boost recruitment of Muslim officers, improve efforts to protect Muslims from a backlash, and improve the flow of information from Muslims to the police about suspected terrorist activity.
Nearly two-thirds of Muslims told pollsters that they had thought about their future in Britain after the attacks, with 63% saying they had considered whether they wanted to remain in the UK. Older Muslims were more uneasy about their future, with 67% of those 35 or over having contemplated their future home country compared to 61% among those 34 or under.
Britain's Muslim population is estimated at 1.6million, with 1.1million over 18, meaning more than half a million may have considered the possibility of leaving.
Three in 10 are pessimistic about their children's future in Britain, while 56% said they were optimistic.
Nearly eight in 10 Muslims believe Britain's participation in invading Iraq was a factor leading to the bombings, compared to nearly two-thirds of all Britons surveyed for the Guardian earlier this month. Tony Blair has repeatedly denied such a link.
Muslim clerics' and leaders' failure to root out extremists is a factor behind the attacks identified by 57% of Muslims, compared to 68% of all Britons, and nearly two-thirds of Muslims identify racist and Islamophobic behaviour as a cause compared to 57% of all Britons.
The general population and Muslims apportion virtually the same amount of blame to the bombers and their handlers, with eight in 10 or more citing these as factors.
The poll finds a huge rejection of violence by Muslims with nine in 10 believing it has no place in a political struggle. Nearly nine out of 10 said they should help the police tackle extremists in the Islamic communities in Britain.
A small rump, potentially running into thousands, told ICM of their support for the attacks on July 7 which killed 56 and left hundreds wounded - and 5% said that more attacks would be justified. Those findings are troubling for those urgently trying to assess the pool of potential suicide bombers.
One in five polled said Muslim communities had integrated with society too much already, while 40% said more was needed and a third said the level was about right.
More than half wanted foreign Muslim clerics barred or thrown out of Britain, but a very sizeable minority, 38%, opposed that.
Half of Muslims thought that they needed to do more to prevent extremists infiltrating their community.
· ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,005 adults aged 18+ by telephone on July 15-17 2005. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.
· Further information at www.icmresearch.co.uk
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source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlo...536222,00.html
more detailed poll results at the link above (end of the quoted article).
the bottom line of my objections to this entire way of refusing to think in anything like adequate detail about "terrorism"--particularly in the ways you see in the states--is that the signifier "terrorist" ends up being a buzzword for mobilizing racism. period. totally ineffectual as a way of confronting an enemy that the notion of "terrorism" itself prevents you from understanding, useless analytically, the notion of "terorrism" does have this one seemingly inevitable outcome in these sorry times--innocent muslims end up living in fear. i am sure that if you are a conservative and are not muslim or dont know anyone who is, then this outcome would not effect you--but iun any number of previous racist outbreaks, the majority did not really feel the implications of what it was doing, did it?
the same kind of thing happened across the united states in the period right after 9/11/2001. if folk who find themselves very taken up in the thrill and adventure of total mobilization cannot distinguish "terrorists" from the muslim family that has lived down the street for x number of years--that is if this category is not even useful in sorting out already known information, how on earth would any of you expect it to be useful in sorting information about people and places you do not know?
but maybe you could fill me in on how exactly beating up someone because they look lik en arab that you happen to run into on the street solely because he or she looks lke an arab helps anyone feel safer about anything?
if you think that this kind of idiotic usage of the blanket term "terrorism" such that it can be associated without problem with an entire religion, with an entire ethnicity, is not problematic, then i dont think you are looking real hard.
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about these schools that "the voice of reason" is on about
:
that's really funny--you too make no distinction between types of schools, between locations--you offer nothing that would focus or narrow what is otherwise a series of arbitrary assertions about "hatred being taught to children"---you seem to dislike the functional equivalent of sunday school in mosques that you know nothing about.
let's think about this. if the problem you have is with relgious schools that teach "hatred" or at least suspcion of that which is other, then you really should apply the same logic to fundamentalist protestant schools in which the political line "we are in a spritual war with the forces of satan, secularism, liberalism, etc." is being taught in the states.....
if your real argument, voice of reason, is against religious based education, then i am in your corner...
but i do not think it is--you only have a problem with muslim education.
the other problem in your post is that you make no distinctions--if you make no distinctions between types of schools etc., what you are in effect arguing is that every muslim country should be invaded by Heroic Christian Americans behind the fig leaf of changing education. it seems to me that you are of the ann coulter school of crazed imperialist programs for america---your "reasonable" post is in effect a rationale for unlimited american military action against any and all muslim countries...and as such is wholly nuts.
that such a thing would be found "reasonable" by anyone is yet another example of the problems this way of thinking creates.