Last year, Pew polled several Muslim countries, including Egypt, on various subjects. With Egypt looking likely to adopt a new government soon, the results are troubling:
The Pew researchers found that 84 percent of Egyptians favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion. In another survey, Pew found that 90 percent of Egyptians say they believe in freedom of religion.
Evidently at least 74% of Egyptians mean something very different by freedom of religion than we do.
ASIDE: To be fair, Americans can be inconsistent in a similar way. Lots of people say they support free speech while simultaneously supporting restrictive speech codes. I think that people know that free speech is something they are supposed to be for, and they don’t really think about what that means. But, a sufficiently great difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. We’re talking here about the death penalty for changing religions, and you just can’t get a clearer violation of freedom of religion than that.
And there’s more:
When asked which side they would take in a struggle between “groups who want to modernize the country [and] Islamic fundamentalists,” 59 percent of Egyptians picked the fundamentalists, while 27 percent picked the modernizers. . .
A majority, 54 percent, support making segregation of men and women in the workplace the law throughout Egypt. . .
When asked whether suicide bombing can ever be justified, 54 percent said yes (although most believe such occasions are “rare.”)
Eighty-two percent supported stoning for those who commit adultery.
(Via Power Line.) (Previous post.)
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