Czech think tank's meta-analysis: 44% of European Muslims are fundamentalists

The Prague Monitor has informed the readers about a survey published by the Czech "European Values" think tank,

Views of 44% of Europe Muslims are fundamentalist, Czech study shows

There have been various attempts to claim that terrorism and anti-Western terrorism is confined to a tiny subgroup of the Muslims. Needless to say, the percentage of Muslims who have "achieved" something as spectacular as the 9/11 attacks is tiny. On the other hand, the percentage of Muslims who agree with basically all important religious, social, and political opinions of the terrorists is large – comparable to 50%.




The think tank has a website and in its Publications section, you may also find the two new PDF files (in Czech), one about the legal foundations of the Islamic extremism and one about the opinions of the European Muslims and their causes.




The researchers have combined many surveys, including very recent ones, and looked for assorted correlations. They found out that the fundamentalism – defined as the the agreement with three principles (Muslims should return to the roots of Islam; there is only one way to read the Quran and it's mandatory for all Muslims; the religious laws beat the countries' laws) – is endorsed by 44% of European Muslims. The individual conditions are matched by 70% of them or so.

To compare, the "same" criteria of fundamentalism are only obeyed by 4% of the Christians.

However, the percentage heavily depends on the "ethnic subgroup" of Muslims. The Turkish Alevites have the lowest degree of fundamentalism and there are many other patterns.

This "fundamentalism" is heavily correlated with particular opinions such as the dismissal of gays; Jews; and the West. The scholars have also looked for the social observables that may be correlated with the fundamentalism. Somewhat surprisingly (at least for someone), they found that fundamentalism is actually positively correlated with the subjective optimism about one's economic situation. The least fundamentalist Muslims are the poor, working ones; the most fundamentalist ones are the rich ones who don't need to work much – perhaps, they become radical because they are isolated from the workplace and they also have enough time to nurture their radicalism.

The more educated the Muslims are, the more likely they are to reject the Sharia law. On the other hand, the education has no impact on the Muslims' opinions about the negativeness of the moral influence of the West.

Also, the survey seems to debunk some popular left-wing ideas that the undesirable behavior of the Muslims may be interpreted as a mirror image or consequence of the hostile attitude or discrimination by the Caucasian majority:

"Neither personal experience with discrimination nor the society's openness to foreigners have any influence," she said.

When I read the PDF document, it basically agrees with almost all the opinions that I have extracted from other materials in the past. But there exists a lot of misconceptions here – and some of them are being deliberately propagated.

The polls also seem to imply that the degree of radicalization is basically the same for first, second, and third generation of the immigrants.

Not surprisingly given the name of the think tank etc., the think tank recommends to outlaw the activities leading to the radicalization of the Czech Muslim community. I have a somewhat bad feeling about scholarly analyses whose declared goal is to analyze "how the truth is" but that also "make recommendations how the things should be". But yes, it's natural for a rational person with certain values to make similar recommendations assuming that the data extracted from the surveys are correct.

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Incidentally, our Slovak brothers are getting ready for the EU presidency since July 1st. As you may imagine, the anti-nation-state clique in Brussels and elsewhere has already kickstarted a Nazi-style campaign painting Slovaks as inferior beings incapable of serving the coffee during the EU presidency, or what exactly they have to do.

The prime minister Fico has hopefully recovered from the light heart attack and reiterated that Islam has no place in Slovakia. The foreign minister Miroslav Lajčák has become Slovakia's official candidate for the chair of the United Nations. So I wish them to rule both Europe and the world soon. ;-) Ban Ki-Moon's term will end at the end of 2016.