muslim islamist popularity

[Harrow, Kenneth]

this issue came up earlier: how popular is al qaeda in muslim lands. this is an answer in a brooks column:

 Across 11 lands in which Pew surveyed Muslims in 2013, a median of only 13 percent had a favorable opinion of Al Qaeda.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

[Moses Ochonu]

Ken, I wouldn’t put much stock in this poll/survey because it is misleading and did not, in my opinion, pose the right question. It’s like asking people in Germany or Europe what they think of the Nazis. The result would be similar to what Pew found in regard to views about AlQaeda in the Muslim world. 

Did the pollsters really expect large numbers of people in the Muslim world to endorse a terrorist organization that is a byword for bloodletting and has attracted undeserved hostility and reputational baggage to their faith?

A more helpful and illuminating survey should have asked specific questions about extremist views as well as views on political Islam and violent jihad in Muslim countries.

More broadly, no one on this list  needs to be lectured on the inherent malleability of statistical discourses—on how statistics can sometimes obscure more than they clarify. You can make statistics say anything depending on how you frame the questions.

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 28, 2021, at 1:36 AM, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:



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[Harrow, Kenneth]

good points moses. if i had to guess about the numbers of people supporting the jihadists movements/islamists in the sahel, i would say the vast majority do not support them, but enough do--out of disgust with their govt, esp in mali--to make the tacit support significant. maybe we have to take each case separately. for instance, it would be nice to have a free and fair election in iran, before we could know whether the mullahs' govt was popular. the revolutionary guards in iran have hijacked everything--military power, economic controls and money, and political processes. i can't believe they'd win a fair election, but i don't know how much that spills over to the ayatollahs.

in places like egypt the more the govt became corrupt, the more popular the muslim brotherhood became, but how do you measure that support?

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2021 9:15 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - muslim islamist popularity

 

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[Gloria Emeagwali]

Ken,

Would you say that the Muslim Brotherhood is  the same as al-Qaida?

I believe that a very low percentage of Muslims favor al-Qaida  and Isis/Isil 

but not sure about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example.

They seemed to have a large following 

and in terms of votes won the election

that put Morsi in power.

I agree that favorability  rating in the Sahel is also pretty low. Denying followers  their musical  engagements and bombing constituents, heartlessly, does not go down well. I suspect that those few  who follow are probably seeking some form of elusive empowerment in the form of petty monetary rewards etc. Some of the recruits are duped. Others are trying to evade capture.

Misogynistic impulses by groups such as the Taliban are palpable in the case of Afghanistan and so, too, musicphobia. This may account for low ratings in urban areas. But we should note,too, that every drone killing of a civilian bystander also creates new recruits by enraged family members or loved ones.

Islam is clearly divided and Balkanized. At first we had the basic

Shia vs Sunni divide.Situating the Tijaniyya and Qadriyaa in that context remains a challenge for me. Now also an alphabet soup of distinctive “advocates”has emerged, from Taliban to Al-Qaida to ISIL to ISIL - K

and beyond.

But Christianity itself in its divisions between Catholics and Protestants,

Pentecostalism, Cherubims and Seraphims and  beyond has its own alphabet soup of membership.

The KKK adopted the cross, and so, too, the Conquistadors of old, the Trumpistadors of today and so on. Misogyny,  pedophilia  and even infanticide (Catholic Canadian Boarding Schools) also creeped in somewhere along the line.

Doing research on this issue from the inside out is certainly useful. 

At the end of the day, though, the merit of  agnosticism, atheism  and secularism  grows day by day.

Prof Gloria Emeagwali 

emea...@ccsu.edu

On Aug 28, 2021, at 09:28, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:



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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Professor Emeagwali,

You were certainly not overestimating the influence of The Muslim Brotherhood's founding father Hassan al- Banna in your passing reference to him, here.

Apart from Quran, the salaat and hadiths I don't know what Nigerian Muslims teach themselves and each other but in my study of Islam (1986 -1995) in my first year (with the Sunnis), here in Stockholm, I cut my teeth on some compulsory reading, books written by Sayyid Qutb, his younger brother Muhammad Qutb, the forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other books published and distributed by The Muslim Students Association, plus a flood of anti-Shia propaganda publications emanating from the most predictable sources /head-quarters of anti-Shia propaganda, all in a vain and malicious effort to counteract the resurgence of interest in “Shiism”, occasioned by the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Tariq Ramadan, Hassan al- Banna's son emerged much later.

Is it possible that al-Banna was the source inspiration of Mohammed Yusuf and to his credit the social welfare services he and early Boko Haram did for their community?  

[Harrow, Kenneth]

i think it is fair to say the muslimbrotherhood is different in different countries. i am not the expert in this, so this is just an opinion

the egyptian muslim brotherhood is not a violent movement, like al qaeda; it doesn't seek to attack foreign forces by bombing etc. on the other hand, it is militantly islamic, seeking to convince and convert all egyptians to islam and to support them.

what i know of al qaeda is that it seeks control via violence. i don't know where that isn't true.

true there are very many sects that are different. in senegal the two dominant ones, tijanis and mourids were in competition, but not at all violent; not at all unusual to have members f these two brotherhoods in the same family. there were many other groups in senegal, some quite amazing. i am thinking of the niassene whose treatment of girls is a model for what should be everywhere.

jews too are deeply divided between ultraorthox and reform or conservative. day and night.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2021 12:21 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

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[Gloria Emeagwali]

Cornelius the Wise,

I did not realize that Tariq Ramadan was connected to al-Banna!

Thanks for the info. His  father/grandfather must be turning in his grave with all those rape charges. Was he framed? Sounds

similar to the Swedish claim against the  whistleblower. The links were quite useful.

GE

On Aug 28, 2021, at 12:29, Cornelius Hamelberg <Cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:



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