65 percent of Muslims seek strict application of sharia law

Here are two data that blow out of the water the idea that most Muslims are “moderates,” i.e., that most Muslims believe in Islam only as an individual religion, not as a political religion. Andrew Bostom writes:

Polling data just released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007—1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians—reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed—almost 2/3, hardly a “fringe minority”—desired this outcome (i.e., “To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate”), including 49% of “moderate” Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition “To require a strict [emphasis added] application of Shari’a law in every Islamic country.”

If two-thirds of Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab, are believers in sharia, then sharia is the dominant belief system of the Muslim world—not just because all authoritative Muslim teaching says it is, but because the great majority of Muslims accept that teaching. Which means that wherever there is a Muslim community, of whatever size, belief in sharia will be the dominant belief or at least an important belief in that community. Which means that in any country where the number of Muslims increases, belief in sharia and the political strength to impose it will also increase.

Sharia destroys all non-Islamic forms of government, destroys all non-Islamic forms of freedom, and reduces all non-Muslims to at best a humiliated second-class status. Therefore anyone who believes in sharia cannot be loyal to Western society, whether we define the West in traditional terms as Christendom or in modern terms as individual freedom.

Therefore excluding terrorists and terror supporters is not enough. Excluding jihadists and jihad supporters—also known as “radical” Muslims—is not enough. Terror and jihad are only the more activist phrase of the Islamic belief system. They are the methods by which sharia is spread. It is sharia that defines the substance of Islam and it is sharia that is the problem.

Therefore, in place of the fatuous and delusive mantra of Daniel Pipes, that “Radical Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution,” the correct mantra is what I have been saying over and over for years, that “Significant numbers of Muslims do not belong in any Western country, period.”

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Ben W. writes:

Right on!

I have no desire whatsoever to emigrate to Muslim countries, to live or open a business there, or to raise a family in an Islamic society.

Why Muslims want to come over here is beyond me. I have no interest in living “there” because “here” is home for me. This is not their home—it is “over there.” Stay there, pure and simple—that is their home—that is where they can apply their laws. Why they want to leave what is their home is not my concern—let them make their home as homey as they wish. I don’t want my home to be remade to be their home. I’m not into house-sharing!

Thank you, Lawrence.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 27, 2007 09:32 AM | Send