Tuesday 27 June 2017

Fun Online Polls: The Finsbury Mosque attack; Homophobia

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Are you surprised that somebody finally snapped and attacked a group of Muslims near a mosque?

No - 94%
Yes - 6%


Not much more to say on that.

Except, it was a good turnout with 128 votes. Unusually, eleven people shared the poll on Facebook and five Tweeted it (besides me), thanks to all those who took the few seconds to do that!
--------------------------
There have been a lot of headlines decrying our new co-overlords, the DUP as homophobes. Well, quite clearly they are, which is A Bad Thing IMHO. The outrage is mainly from the left. The right wingers who secretly agree with them are remaining tight lipped on the subject.

But why the panic? For sure there are 10 DUP MPs, but only 292,316 people voted for them. It's hardly a mass movement.

If you're worried about homophobia (which I am), what is rather more relevant is that there are about 13 Muslim MPs and just under 3 million Muslims in the UK, half of whom think homosexuality should be illegal and of whom 23,000 are 'potential radicals' and 3,000 are on watch lists.

(Somebody did a great graphic on Twitter suggesting that in many respects, the DUP and Islam have a lot of similarities, I can't find it now. But I can't remember the last time a DUP activist carried out a terrorist attack.)

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

"Who is more homophobic: the DUP/their voters or Islam/Muslims?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

4 comments:

Bayard said...

The corresponding figures for Northern Ireland are: population in the UK 1.8 million, 17 MPs (the Catholic Church takes a dim view of homosexuality, too) and, I dare say given Sinn Fein's links with the IRA, as many "potential radicals" (whatever the f*ck they are) and people on watch lists.

In fact, given that May's Bad Monday Agreement looks set to reignite the Troubles, those figures could soon be exceeded. Then, hurrah, we will have a choice; (such an important part of modern life, choice) we can be killed by a nominally Muslim terrorist OR a nominally Christian one.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, you're changing the topic. What's the big difference between Ireland and Great Britain, culturally or anything? Not much. The IRA just wanted a part of it to be part of Ireland and not if the UK. That's not an existential difference.

Bayard said...

Ok, a few more stats: The DUP has 10 MPs, all of whom are in a position of great power. Of the Muslim MPs, only 3 are in the Tory Party. All the other are in a position of almost no power whatsoever. They'd be hard pushed to get £10 thousand out of the government, let alone £1.5 billion. Using your own statistic that 50% of Muslims are homophobic (assuming this to be a genuine statistic, and not something from the Daily Mailexpressgraph, aka the Motherlode of Shite), we have one Muslim homophobe MP in a position to make policy and one who must be in two minds about it (given that we can't have half an MP). So, to pick two Muslim MPs at random, (Javid and Chisti) we have only 60,584 people voting for them, divide that by 1.5 and that gives you just over 40,000.

Also your statistic of 3 million muslims in the UK is another diagonal comparison, when compared to the number who voted for the DUP. If you vote for the DUP, you are by, definition, a DUP supporter. However, if you vote for a Muslim MP, that doesn't make you a Muslim or even a supporter of Islam, all it means is that you aren't a raging islamophobe. Nor were the Muslim MPs only elected by Muslims, so of that 40,000 above, there's a fair chance that at least 10,000 of them were non-Muslims.

Come on Mark, less of the diagonal comparisons, you should know they don't work, you've debunked enough of them.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, it's not a diagonal comparison, it's two lists, one for the DUP/voters and one for Muslims.

If you think the number of Muslim MPs is irrelevant, perhaps you are right, perhaps you are not. If you say that there is no particular correlation between Muslim voters and Muslim MPs, perhaps you are also right, perhaps you are not. But if you look at local politics you will find that they do vote for their own. Sometimes more than once. And George Galloway went for the Muslim vote in a big way and it worked.

I'm assuming an intelligent readership who will make up their own minds, if thats' OK?