I read it first on Barcepundit but Islam in Europe had it translated. So I am going to draw some conclusions, considering the percentages that the Govt’s poll has shown.
The poll was done with the interviews to 2,000 foreign Muslims living in Spain of about 767, 784 people. So, this is the first flaw I see on the poll. There are Spanish converts to Islam and some of them can be much more radical than the people who have been Muslims since their birth. For example, in the documentary Generation Jihad (1, 2, 3), portraiting the radicalisation of young UK Muslims, two of the Muslims who had been condemned by terrorist attacks were converts, who weren’t adapted to their surroundings (they critisized the “degenerated Britons”). The reason is that the converts should prove their real compromise with their new religion, so if they are introduced in it by someone who is an extremist, they are going to be extremelly radicalised.
Barcepundit has made some calculations:
- 5% of the Muslims express “radical views“. 5%(767,784)=39,389.
- 2% (15,356) don’t agree or disagree with the statement “violence can never be used to defend or spread religious beliefs”. Don’t agree or disagree? Are we insane? How on earth can you “don’t agree or disagree” (that is, not have an opinion…) about such an statement?
- 1% (7,678) does not agree at all or agrees very little with the statement “violence can never be used to defend or spread religious beliefs”.
But, being violence a most important thing, I don’t think it’s the only interesting thing:
- Firstly, the number of Muslims who define themselves as very religious Muslims “has increased slightly”. We see the “slight increase” and it’s not so slight: the percentage has risen from 41% to 52% in three years. There is no mention to what they define as “very practising Muslim” but it would be really useful to know.
- In the same period of time, the percentage of adapted Muslims has decreased (from 86% to 81%) and has increased the one of Muslims who are not adapted (from 17% to a 12%). That is, nowadays there are 130,523 Muslims who consider themselves as not adapted to Spanish lifestyle.
Normally, adaptation to a country, in the matter we are speaking here, means that you consider yourself as any other citizen, with rights and obligations before the law, whatever their ideas, beliefs or creed. But a growing trend in un-adapted people means precisely that they consider themselves as not supporting that same lifestyle or values, which the perceive as “alien”. A 5% rise in 3 years, even when the Government has been pushing their “Alliance of Civilizations”‘ agenda, is not precisely something to be happy about. Because those people are normally the ones who consider that they don’t have to adapt or that their own religious regulation should be enacted, because they are not like the rest. In this case the Sharia Law.
I’m not saying that all those un-adapted are pushing for Shariah Law. But that an important number of them can consider that possibility that I do say.
Note that there is no question about this in the poll. Even when extremists are not only the ones who support violence, but also those who support Islamization and the enactment of Sharia Law in Western countries, the poll does not contain any question regarding this matter. It’s true that there have been no calls for Sharia enactment here, except when Mansur Escudero asked the Government to introduce polygamy in the Civil Code, with a reference to the Qu’ran (so if you weren’t Muslim and you wanted to marry more than one wife, you were bound by the Islamic regulation). But the countries where that calls for Sharia are going on, had a much more important tradition of Islamic immigration than Spain.
Anyway, cases like the Sharia illegal tribunal set up in Catalonia which condemned a woman to stoning on adultery charges (and whose “judges” have been freed after she hasn’t been found) or the imam who tried to force the hijab on a woman of his mosque, even if isolated incidents, should have been reason enough to add that question.
There are also no indications about the geographics on this subject. We know that Salafists have an important presence in several regions (particularly in Catalonia, where HuT has a growing “fan club” and when they recruit Al-Qaeda, for example), so it would have been also interesting to know the precentages about this in the poll. Specially because if the interviewed are from regions where radicalization is lower, then the results are going to be much more favourable.
Anyway, it’s good to hear that they consider themselves as good Muslims and good Spanish nationals in an important majority.