In 2007 34% of Lebanon’s Muslim respondents to a Pew survey felt suicide bombings could be justifiable.
One in three people sounds horrific, but compare with the survey 5 years earlier.
In 2002 74% of Lebanon’s Muslim respondents to a Pew survey felt suicide bombings could be justified.
The figures are taken from the Pew Global Attitudes report released 24th July 2007. (Interestingly the second largest Muslim population in the world, that of India, is not included in the survey.)
Had Lebanese Muslims become any less devout between 2002 and 2007? That is what some popular literature against religion, and the Moslem religion in particular, would lead us to logically infer.
Rather, as I have attempted to point out in some of these posts, religion is a Protean beast that adapts itself to the social and politico-economic issues of the day. I recently wrote in The Problem with Some Muslims something like:
Christianity has both practiced and condemned slavery and racism, supported and fought against war and oppression of women and children, argued both sides of capitalism and socialism, according to the time and society in which it found itself.
Could it be the same with the Moslem religion? Continue reading “Violence and (the Muslim) religion — some real data (for humanists) to chew on”