Pew Surveys Show Increasing Awareness of Islam's Violent Nature

This is encouraging. Christianity Today posted an encouraging chart in September showing three recent surveys by Pew. The first one was conducted in February of 2014, the second in July and the more recent one in September.

The question in the survey is this: "Compared with other religions, is the Islamic religion more likely to encourage violence among its believers?"

The most striking feature of the chart is that in every demographic slice listed in the 3 surveys the amount of "yes" votes have increased over time. There are a few dips, but in general everyone has become more ready to admit that Islam is violent between February and September of this year. Catholics are up 12% TO 53%, Protestants are up 16% to 59%.

The headline on the image is very misleading. "Most Older Adults Say Islam Encourages Violence More Than Other Religions." This describes one line of the results of the 3 surveys. Do people who slap headlines on articles and other pieces of information bother to read them first? The headline should merely be "Surveys Show More Seeing Islam As Encouraging Violence".

Here is a link to the full Pew study on the matter.

This is good news that people realize the danger of Islam and how violence is part of its true nature. Yes, there are other features of Islam which are good, and many good Muslims. But that is not what the survey is about, nor do those facts really matter in the face of the violent totalitarian ideology of the political Islamism against which we are fighting a war. Those are just the common red herrings which people drag across the path toward the truth about Islam and toward combating the evils which pervade Islamic teachings and actions.

(Note: I should point out that the CT article makes a number of assertions and quotes people making assertions which I in no way endorse. Most of these are attempts to excuse Islamic violence in some way, simply put.)