Sharia: The Numbers

There is an abundance of disturbing polling data from across the Muslim world that strongly suggests that the desire to implement sharia in its draconian entirety is still a very strong driving force around the globe today.

For example, according to a 2007 World Public Opinion / University of Maryland poll, 71% of Muslims – hardly a fringe minority – surveyed in four major Islamic countries (Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia) openly declared that they wanted to see the resurrection of the Caliphate. 74% also wanted strict (that word was emphasised) application of sharia law in every Islamic country.  In early 2009, a follow-up poll by the same team achieved similar results.

Similarly, a 2010 survey by the respected Pew polling organisation found that about eight in ten Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan (82% each) endorse the stoning of people who commit adultery, while 70% of Muslims in Jordan and 56% of Nigerian Muslims share this view. Muslims in Pakistan and Egypt are also the most supportive of whippings and cutting off of hands for theft; 82% in Pakistan and 77% in Egypt favour making this type of punishment the law in their countries, as do 65% of Muslims in Nigeria and 58% in Jordan.

Pew has repeated these results many times. For example, another poll of Pakistani Muslims, specifically, found that 78% favour death for those who leave Islam; 80% favour whippings and cutting off hands for theft; and 83% favour stoning adulterers. Most recently, a large report published by Pew in 2013, compiling data from four years of research in almost forty countries, found that in ten of twenty countries where there were sufficient samples for valid statistical analysis, the majority of Muslims surveyed supported amputating the limbs of thieves and stoning adulterers to death. The highest rate of support (89%) was in Pakistan, with Afghanistan (85%) and the Palestinian territories (84%) close behind. The lowest rate of support, recorded in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was still 21%, or almost one in four.

Now imagine what might happen to a non-Muslim country when people with this mindset are allowed to settle and live in it in unprecedented numbers. You don't need to be a mathematician to know that the cultural sums don't compute.