New Poll Suggests Muslims Worldwide Support Stricter 'Islamic' Laws

I find the numbers and ‘results’ of this poll disturbing, not because of what the poll alleges to be true, but because of the extremely small sample of people interviewed. Only 8,000 people in 7 countries with “large Muslim populations” were interviewed (face to face), and Pakistan alone has over 180 million people.

Unlike the US, where pretty much every family has a land line phone and representative samples can be taken at random by calling people’s home numbers, no such equalizer exists in the countries where this survey was taken.

Say they interviewed 2,000 people (out of 180 million) in Pakistan – where did they find those people? How is it possible to ensure a representative sample without knowing each participants’ background information such as education, languages spoken, caste, age, occupation and religious sect?

Having lived in Pakistan for over three years, I’ve met people from almost every social background, and not one person I’ve met supports stoning, hand amputation or death for apostasy. I’ve probably met and talked about politics (in English, Urdu or via translation) with more Pakistanis than were interviewed for this survey, and my unscientific analysis is that 0% of those people would support such an interpretation of Islamic law.