FactCheck: how many British Muslims support IS?

The figure stems from a United Kingdom company Survation poll showing 5.3 percent of British Muslims have “a lot of sympathy” with young Muslims who go to fight in Syria while 14.5 percent said they had “some sympathy“. Plus, not a lot of people are going to admit they have “no sympathy” for those involved in violence.

None of the people I polled who responded to the question with the “some sympathy” answer supported jihadis.

The list of critics now includes Survation, the company that the Sun commissioned to carry out the poll. “What I wanted to say is that I had some understanding of why they chose to fight”.

He told the Guardian that he didn’t want to take part in the poll but wanted to know what some of the questions were. Sit across a table and decide which would be the most ridiculous, the most ambiguous, and the most Islamophobic question they could ask? The Sun added these up to reach 19.5 per cent, which they rounded up to 20 per cent. Conversely, 71.5 per cent said they had no sympathy for young Muslims who leave the United Kingdom to join fighters in Syria.

But there’s also the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front, the Army of Mujahideen, Jaish al-Sham, the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, as well as various Kurdish forces.

YouGov, the Sun’s regular pollster, had refused to conduct the poll, saying it would not be able to accurately represent Britain’s Muslim population with the timeframe and budget allocated by the Sunday.

The Muslim Council of Britain accused the paper of “sensationalising” the findings.

Many, if not most of the British muslims who were surveyed will understand that the picture in Syria is not black and white.

Another ICM poll in August found that support for IS among the general British population was dwarfed by enthusiasm for the group in France.

The poll’s methodology itself has come under scrutiny in recent days.

Although the religious hate crimes have reportedly increased dramatically this month, they were prevalent even before the deadly attacks in Paris.

The number is the most that IPSO has ever received, the Mirror noted. But what about the supporters of other parties, or those that don’t vote?

There is of course always an element of doubt as to how far these questionnaires can capture the nuances of people’s views, and how honest people are being.

Maria Sobolewska, a Manchester University academic, has studied similar polls on attitudes to extremism.