1.0 Summary
This is a survey of readers' comments on articles about Islam and Muslims published by leading quality and popular British newspapers over the 12 months to November 2016. It updates a similar survey covering 2015 and earlier [See Note 1] It concentrates on social, cultural, religious and political topics and mostly ignores terrorism and armed conflict in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The Islamic State is sometimes covered because it has such a strong Islamic dimension.
1.1 The Main Findings Across the political spectrum, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail, an overwhelmingly large number of readers are critical of Islam, severely so in many cases. The criticism covers a wide range of subjects including freedom of speech, sharia, family law, how to handle extremism, extremist beliefs, treatment of women, integration, multiculturalism, and segregated communities. At least 90 percent of the comments and the votes on the comments are negative about Islam. The only difference between the Guardian on the left and the Daily Mail on the right is Guardian readers write far longer comments!! [2] Section 2.0, a selection of TYPICAL COMMENTS, gives a quick overview of what readers have to say.
Outstanding comments are highlighted.
1.2 What's Covered
The survey is divided into sections, covering the Left, Right and Centre of British politics.
Articles Surveyed
The Guardian 59
The Independent & similar 9
Daily Mail, The Telegraph, & similar 19
The Times, Regional and International Press, & Other 13
For each article you are given: (1) Title and date. (2) A short extract from the article to illustrate its content. (3) The most popular readers' comments - those with the highest number of votes, or recommendations, or likes, from other readers.