Thousands of people have ridiculed The Sun newspaper's misleading headline yesterday which claimed that one in five British Muslims have "sympathy for jihadis."
The front page headline attracted record levels of complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) which received more complaints than any other story published since the watchdog opened in September 2014.
However on top of the official complaints, many more decided humour was the best way to counter the sensationalist and misleading headline.
#1in5Muslims have forcefully converted their cat to islam pic.twitter.com/RCvwaqKuw6
— Anas (@Saka1410) November 23, 2015 " data-caption="null" data-credit="null">#1in5Muslims thought this was white and gold. #throwback pic.twitter.com/OvEtfFzLuG
— Toseef Ahmad (@elseefo) November 23, 2015 " data-caption="null" data-credit="null">#1in5Muslims think Netflix and chill means Netflix and chill.
— Areeb Ullah (@are_eb) November 23, 2015 " data-caption="null" data-credit="null">#1in5muslims think Ross and Rachel were on a break
— ثناء (@LiberatedSoul_) November 23, 2015 " data-caption="null" data-credit="null">As Steve Rose, a researcher for the inter-faith group Faith Matters pointed out, the question asked in the polling was "how do you feel about young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria?" The question deliberately does not ask respondents which of the many groups fighting in Syria they supported. Nevertheless the Sun's headline includes the word "jihadis" (not in the original question) even though most of the groups fighting in Syria are opposed to ISIS and militant Islam.
Additionally the newspaper ignores the fact that an earlier poll for Sky News had found that 30 per cent of non-Muslims had "some sympathy" with young Muslims who left the UK to join the different fighting groups in Syria.
Despite the headline, The Sun's report admits "a clear majority of the 2.7 million Brits who follow Islam are moderate" and the proportion of British Muslims who have no sympathy at all for fighters in Syria has risen significantly.
"The number who have no sympathy at all for jihadis has also risen from 61 per cent in March to 71 per cent today," the paper acknowledges, despite its headline.
