Friday, February 5, 2016

Hasty Generalization: Trump v. Muslims

It is no secret that Donald Trump does not like some groups of people in America.  One of these groups are Muslims in America.  Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump has repeatedly voiced his dissatisfaction with American foreign policy towards Muslims.  Trump thinks that in order to "make America great again", we need to stop letting Muslims into the country for a variety illogical reasons.

Trump's islamophobia shows itself in his press release from December 7th, 2015.  Trump and his campaign officials claimed, "25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad" and 51% of those polled, "agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah."   It was later revealed that this poll was an online opt-in survey of only 600 Muslims.

Trump's use of this data represents a hasty generalization.  Trump surveyed a small population of Muslims and used this data to generalize the views of the population of Muslims in America.  To put this in perspective, a study done in 2014 shows that 0.9% of Americans are Muslim.  That means that there are around 3.3 million Muslims in America.  Of those 3.3 million, 600 were surveyed in an online pole.  The statistics presented by Trump in his press release do not adequately represent the views of the majority Muslims living in America, and should be considered a proper logic.
For Trump's Press Release Click Here

1 comment:

  1. Absolutely crazy right? He doesn't even use facts to back himself up but uses the fear of uneducated, southern(mostly) Americans to stride forward in the polls. I don't agree with his ideas about getting rid of the Muslims in America. One thing that makes me happy about this is that this all would have to go through the Government to be passed to do all these laws he speaks of. But anyways, fantastic post, really makes you internally angry at Trump. Thanks for sharing man.

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