That 'Muslims More Loyal' Poll

As reported by the BBC.

"Muslims in the UK are more likely to identify strongly with Britain and have confidence in its institutions than the population as a whole, a poll suggests.

The survey says they are also more likely to take a positive view of living side-by-side with people of different races and religions.

Fifty-seven per cent of the Muslims polled said they identified strongly with their country, compared with 48% of the general public.

Muslims were also more likely to express confidence in the police (78% to 69%), national government (64% to 36%), the justice system (67% to 55%) and elections (73% to 60%).

Nearly three-quarters of the Muslims said they felt loyal to the UK, and 82% said they respected other religions.

But just 45% of the wider population said Muslims living in the UK were loyal to the nation, and only 55% said they were respectful."

Huzzah ! These guys are more British than the Brits ! As Sunny at Pickled Politics put it "that should shut up some of the usual racists". The Times sub-editors titled Michael Binyon's piece "Muslim, British and just like the rest of us".

Call me an old cynic, but this seemed a little too good to be true. Just before elections, too. I wondered if that poll, (if reported accurately), may have been telling a different, deeper story. We have three slightly ambiguous sentences in the BBC report.

"Muslims in the UK are more likely to identify strongly with Britain" is upfront - no figures given. But fewer and fewer native Brits identify with the UK, instead identifying with England, Scotland or Wales (Northern Ireland is an exception, half identifying as British, half Irish). An unintended consequence of devolution.

"Fifty-seven per cent of the Muslims polled said they identified strongly with their country, compared with 48% of the general public."

Hang on - what's "their country" ? Britain, England, what ? People of recent immigrant stock, the overwhelming majority of whom live in England, have tended to identify as British rather than English.

It turns out that, as reported by Foreign Policy, which seems to have the fullest coverage, it is indeed Britain we're talking about.





"Nearly three-quarters of the Muslims said they felt loyal to the UK, and 82% said they respected other religions.

But just 45% of the wider population said Muslims living in the UK were loyal to the nation, and only 55% said they were respectful."

Hold on a minute. Where are the comparison figures for 'the wider population' ? We don't get them. Instead we get what the wider population think of Muslim loyalty. So we don't know how the BBC derives its 'more loyal than most' headline. Alas the FP report doesn't feature the 'loyalty' figures - but if the BBC are reporting correctly, and we're talking UK, the poll may be telling us as much about the fracture lines within Britain, expressed as an increased loyalty to the constituent nations, as it does about Muslim loyalty.

(The report was apparently due to be released Wednesday, but I can't find it on the Gallup site. Anyone know where it is, or who commissioned the poll ?)

UPDATE - thanks to commenters who point out this David Conway post at Civitas :

I think there is very good reason to doubt the impartiality of those responsible for devising and for interpreting the poll, and hence to mistrust any claims about what it supposedly has revealed about the opinions of Muslims.

The reason to mistrust the impartiality of some of those connected with the poll is that, as stated on its own website, in developing and analysing data from the World Poll, the Gallup Organisation has relied 'on a panel of world–renowned scientists … [who] include John Esposito'. Now, John Esposito, as I explained in a related posting about the Gallup poll in February, is the founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington DC which changed its name to its present one, after his university where it is based received a gift of $20 million from the man to whose name his centre changed its own.

As I reported in my posting about the Times' encomium of Ken Livingstone last week, this Saudi benefactor is known to be someone who is prepared to use his fabulous wealth and great influence to shape world-opinion in a way favourable to Muslims in general and to the Saudi Wahhabi regime in particular. He also happens to be the single largest share-holder in the holding company that owns, among many other news-media, ... the Times.