Good news, or meaningless news? With today’s news media, you can’t tell.

The Telegraph headline says: “Islam poses a threat to the West, say 53pc in poll.” But in keeping with the marvelous standards of contemporary journalism, the story, written by the Telegraph’s Home Affairs editor Philip Johnston, does not supply any further details on the poll, including the actual wording of the question, so it’s not possible for us to know the real significance of the headline. Johnson presents the 53 percent figure as a big increase in the number of white Britons who are concerned about Islam as such and not just about a supposed tiny handful of extremists. However, he inadvertently undercuts that view when he writes:

Since a similar poll was conducted after the July 7 bombings in London last year, there has been a significant increase in the number of people worried about some of their Muslim compatriots.

The proportion of those who believe that “a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism” has nearly doubled from 10 per cent a year ago to 18 per cent now.

This is far less impressive than it sounds. Since a shocking, widely publicized poll showed recently that 24 percent of Muslims in Britain support Muslim terrorist attacks against Britain (and similar though not quite as extreme poll results have appeared repeatedly since the July 2005 London bombings), it would seem that the number of people who believe that “a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism” ought to be, not 18 percent, but 100 percent. That a large proportion of Muslims in Britain support terror is not an opinion, but a well-established fact. That only 18 percent of Britons are aware of this fact is pathetic. So, much as I hope for signs that Westerners are awakening to the reality of the Islamic threat, this story, absent further clarification, is not one of them.

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Paul Nachman writes:

“That a large proportion of Muslims in Britain support terror is not an opinion, but a well-established fact. That only 18 percent of Britons are aware of this fact is pathetic. So, much as I hope for signs that Westerners are awakening to the reality of the Islamic threat, this story is not one of them. “

I think your remark is too gloomy on a couple of counts:

1. Don’t forget the bit of Nixonian wisdom passed to us via David Gergen and Michael Kelly: That about the time you’ve said something substantive enough times to feel like screaming, that’s about when the clueless American public starts to, dimly, hear it. And from what Dalrymple writes, surely we can assume the same is true of the British public. So I take these recent results, however disparate numerically, to mean that people are catching on. The absolute magnitudes are disappointing, but the incremental changes are in the right direction.

2. It’s appearing in the mainstream media. The politically-correct silence is cracking.

LA replies:

I accept Mr. Nachman’s judicious criticisms.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 25, 2006 10:10 AM | Send