Furnish on Pew findings re: Islam

Dr. Furnish Analyzes Pew Research Study | Joel's Trumpet:

May 2nd, 2013 at 11:47 am

[…] As always, Dr. Furnish has written an excellent analysis of the Pew Research firm’s most recent survey of Muslim opinions and views. I would encourage all interested to read the article at ZenPundit. […]

zen:

May 2nd, 2013 at 1:08 pm

Hi Tim,
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Excellent post! This was fascinating – have a question for you since you raised the issue of Maylasia.
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Next door is Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim state and one where Islam had traditionally been more moderate and in some places syncretic than elsewhere in the muslim world. What inroads have more radical strands of Salafism and Deobandism made there in radicalizing the population? Earlier in the decade a SEA specialist from NIU’s Southeast Asian center told me the Saudis had financed upwards of 12,000 madrassas there. Where is Indonesian Islam going and how is it likely to impact Indonesia politically?

Tim Furnish:

May 2nd, 2013 at 2:26 pm

Zen,
Thanks for posting it (special thanks to Charles!) and for your kind words.
Indonesia is an interesting–and very important–case.  I fear that Indonesia’s much-vaunted reputation for moderation owes more to the suppression of political Islam under Sukarno and Suharto (1945-1998) than to facts on the ground.  Look at this Pew data for Indonesia: “want sharia as law of the land”–72%; “want sharia to apply to non-Muslims”–50%; support for corporal punishment–high 40s %.  But at least only 18% of Indonesian Muslims support death penalty for leaving Islam.  I am not sure that the conservative/traditionalist Islam promulgated by the major parties such as Muhammadiyah and Nahdatul Ulama is all that averse to Wahhabi/Salafi blandishment.  
The best two books to read on this topic are Ramakrishna, Radical Pathways: Understanding Muslim Radicalization in Indonesia (PSI, 2009) and Singh, The Talibanization of SE Asia (PSI, 2007).  

amspirnational:

May 2nd, 2013 at 11:33 pm

these trends got big boosts when US imperialism funded the ouster of the Soviet from Afghan and, of course,
when the Zionist project came to fruition, aided and abetted quickly by the same entity.

David W. Lincoln:

May 3rd, 2013 at 10:52 pm

Nicely done, Tim.

What caught my eye was the percentage of people in each country in favour of the death penalty for those who leave Islam.  In all honesty, all the other data is just commentary, as far as I can tell.

Paul Ogden:

May 5th, 2013 at 11:05 am

Elephant-in-the-room questions that Pew did not ask: “Does a Jewish state have a right to exist? Do you believe that Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs? Should non-Muslims have the same rights as Muslims in your country?”

Charles Cameron:

May 5th, 2013 at 7:24 pm

I think the “descendant of apes and pigs” issue is an excellent one for showing how much nuance we need to bring to our discussions.  
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As I understand it, President Morsi has referred to the “occupiers of the land of Palestine” in these terms:

This is what these occupiers of the land of Palestine know – these blood-suckers, who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.

The Angry Arab News Service notes

The phrase as it is in reference to Jews does NOT appear in the Qur’an as is claimed by anti-Semitic Islamists (there is indeed a reference to “and made them apes and pigs” in a particular historical reference.   There is however a Hadith (typically disputed) that Muhammad’s wife, `A’ishah, once described Jews as “brothers of apes” when a group of Jews did not address the Prophet properly, according to her although the same Hadith reports that the prophet saluted the visiting Jews.  This reference is used by contemporary Islamists to justify their language of today. 

 
Muhammad Asad, in his Message of the Qur’an, notes:

Contrary to many of the commentators who take this reference to “apes and swine” in a literal sense, the famous tabi’i Mujahid explains it as a metaphorical description (mathal) of the moral degradation which such sinners undergo: they become wildly unpredictable like apes, and as abandoned to the pursuit of lusts as swine (Manor VI, 448). This interpretation has also been quoted by Tabari in his commentary on 2:65.

PM Netanyahu also uses animal imagery on occasion, here referring to the Palestinian Authority — 

A leopard has sunk its teeth in our flesh, in the flesh of our children, wives, our elderly, and we will not be tempted to believe that this leopard has now changed its spots.  We will not ignore its voracious growls. We will strike you down.
 

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And then of course, there’s Darwin — who now finds himself in trouble with many Muslims and many Christians alike for suggesting in the most literal sense that my ancestors were the sons and daughters of apes…

daud:

May 5th, 2013 at 8:41 pm

 
We need more stats concerning  and European Muslim enclaves, states like Kosovo and post Ottoman nations like Bulgaria especially Turkic and Turky

David W. Lincoln:

May 10th, 2013 at 3:32 pm

One of the lessons I learned from “God’s war on terror” by Walid Shoebat, and Joel Richardson is this: The haddiths interpret the Quran.
 
They go together like two peas in a pod.
 

Charles Cameron:

May 10th, 2013 at 10:15 pm

It’s hideously formatted, without paragraph breaks, I’m afraid — but I suggest you read this piece from the (conservative, decidedly pro-Israel!) Jerusalem Post before taking Shoebat too seriously — let’s just say that Joel Richardson believes him, and plenty of others don’t.
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As far as the ahadith are concerned, yes, most schools of Islam use those hadith they consider authentic to support their interpretation of the faith, although this is not the case with members of the ‘Ahl al-Qur’an, who hold that the Qur’an alone contains all that is necessary.

The Alawis of Syria and the (In)Advisability of US Intervention There | The Counter Jihad Report:

August 29th, 2013 at 10:38 pm

[…] had the pleasure of introducing Timothy R. Furnish, PhD, as a guest blogger here before. Today he offers us his timely commentary on factors which should influence US decision-making […]