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February 8, 2017

Daily Star apologises for report of survey which found Muslims MORE likely to report terrorist relatives to police

By Dominic Ponsford

The Daily Star has apologised for a headline which said: “Almost half Brit Muslims want Sharia law and WOULDN’T report relative in ISIS: Shock study”.

The story covered a survey released by Policy Exchange which found that 52 per cent of Muslims surveyed would report someone close to them to the police if they became aware they were getting involved with people who support terrorism in Syria.

Some 26 per cent of Muslims surveyed said they would talk to the person directly and 4 per cent said they would not get involved.

Miqdaad Versi, of the Muslim Council, who made the complaint via press regulator IPSO said the survey suggested Muslims were more like to report people to the police than the general population comparing it to other surveys.

A previous ICM poll found that 34 per cent of Muslims would report people close to them to the police under these circumstances, versus 30 per cent of a “control group” representing the general ppulation.

The headline was amended by the Daily Star to say: “Almost half of Brit Muslims want a ‘soft’ version of Sharia law: Shock claims from study”.

This reflected the fact that survey found that 43 per cent of Muslims surveyed favoured the introduction of “soft” Sharia law covering financial disputes.

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The Daily Star said: “Given those findings it is accepted that the headline and introdution to the article incorrectly reported the statistical results from the study. We apologise for that inaccuracy.”

Versi said a further article based on the same report published by ITV has been taken down.

Press Gazette research has found that news organisations covered by IPSO are far more likely to publish misleading stories about Islam than they are about any other religion.

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