From The Daily Mail:
The findings were described by researchers at the Centre for Social Cohesion think tank, which commissioned the poll, as ‘deeply alarming’.
But a prominent Muslim student group called the report ‘weak and unrepresentative’ and said it undermined ‘positive work carried out by Islamic societies’.
The Centre for Social Cohesion, founded last year to study religion and tolerance, has drawn attention to the extremist influence of Islamic societies and study centres at British universities.
The survey was based on a YouGov poll of 1,400 students, 600 of them Muslims, at 12 universities with influential Islamic societies.
These included eight in London, among them the London School of Economics, Imperial College, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester and Manchester.
It found that a large minority of Muslim students express views that are strongly socially conservative or which suggest they are open to extremist thinking.
And the critics respond:
The Federation of Student Islamic Societies called the survey mischievous.
Its president Faisal Hanjra said: ‘This is yet another damning attack on the Muslim community by elements within the academic arena whose only purpose seems to be the undermining of sincere efforts by mainstream Muslim organisations to tackle the threat of terror which wider society faces.
‘The report is methodologically weak, it is unrepresentative and above all serves only to undermine the positive work carried out by Islamic societies across the country.’
Even if these numbers are a bit exaggerated, which may or may not be the case, it should be chilling that anyone could justify killing another person in the name of religion.
(via hoverFrog at the FAForums)