Bishopnose

A report, Muslims shift from violence, in the International Herald Tribune today says that a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project conducted before the 7 July London bombings has found that Muslims in the Middle East and Asia see less justification now for violence against civilians than they did two years ago. The poll was conducted in 17 countries, among 17,000 people, including 6 predominantly Muslim countries, excluding Malaysia, between late April and early June. The IHT says "it offers an unusually broad look at Muslim attitudes, and at Western attitudes on a range of Muslim issues." The six predominantly Muslim countries which took part in the survey are Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey which together have a combined Muslim population of about 516 million, less than a third of the 1.7 billion Muslim people worldwide, while the 11 countries with minority Muslim population which participated in the poll are Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain and the United States.

Question: Can 17,000 people (0.001%) speak for 1.7 billion Muslims in the world? Can the sampling of 5,228 (0.0004%) in the 6 Muslim countries in the poll speak for 1.2 billion Muslims in the Middle East and Asia? There are 46 predominantly Muslim countries in the world.

Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Turkey in the Middle East together account for about 110 million Muslims while Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, and Pakistan in Asia make up about 406 million Muslims.