If you missed Newt Gingrich’s speech at the Republican National Convention then this was the gist of it: ‘Be afraid of the Islamists. Be very, very, very afraid. Thought September 11 was bad? Hah! You ain’t seen nothing yet.’
.... As someone on Twitter pointed out, an anagram of “Republican National Convention” is “Con vulnerable nation into panic” and Gingrich did just that in a way that only Gingrich can really do.
.... After the media reported his exact words he quickly backtracked by saying that “the news media went into a hysteria overnight in trying to grossly exaggerate what I was saying.” Not wanting a repeat of this, Gingrich did some Googling and found some statistics about how, while not all Muslims want to kill you, a sizable proportion of them do.
“Pew Research finds that just 9% of Muslims in Pakistan support Isis,” Gingrich said. “Unfortunately, that 9% is 16 million people. And that’s just one country.” So there you go. He did the math and it proves that he isn’t Islamophobic thank you very much.
Just maybe slightly creative when it comes to the interpretation of data, seeing as that study said 9% of Muslims had a favorable view of Isis, not that they would support it. And, more importantly, the same 2015 Pew report found that Pakistan was an outlier; views of Isis were “overwhelmingly negative” in 10 Muslim-majority nations. Which Gingrich didn’t feel was important to mention. [732 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 192 votes] To be honest, I am not sure that trying to distinguish between 16m muslims who have a 'favourable' view of Isis, as opposed to 'supporting' Isis, is your best argument!
[2ND 178] "Just maybe slightly creative when it comes to the interpretation of data, seeing as that study said 9% of Muslims had a favorable view of Isis, not that they would support it."
So this is where we've ended up, the regressive left trying to convince us that having a 'favourable view' of ISIS does not necessarily mean that you 'support' ISIS. Stop taking your readers as fools.
[3RD 164] ".... that study said 9% of Muslims had a favorable view of Isis, not that they would support it."
Oh well that's all right then! 9% seems to be enough for almost daily jihadist violence in Pakistan and the frequent brutal murder of Christians and other minorities. A phobia is an irrational fear of something that doesn't actually pose a threat. It doesn't apply here.
[4TH 154] We've all seen the figures from polls showing British Muslim attitudes to things such as terrorism,drawing cartoons & homosexuality.Islam has a problem which in turn is causing the rest of us problems and people want our governments to do something about it other than the usual appeasement.That's not islamaphobia,that's self preservation.
[5TH 154 ] "His Republican National Convention speech started with a roll call of all the recent disasters that he believes Muslims were responsible for. There were many"
To be fair, muslims are responsible for a lot of them. [Guardian Cif] Read more
