Wilders criticized for bias, data manipulation

Research bureau Motivaction and professor of sociology and migration Ruud Koopmans have taken distance from the manner in which PVV-leader Geert Wilders used their research data, arguing that he used his own bias to pull the data behind his argument unjustly, Trouw reports. In the general debate in Parliament yesterday, Wilders said that 73 percent of Dutch Muslims believe that people traveling to Syria to fight for ISIS are heros. He based this statistic on the research done by Motivaction last year. Senior researcher Ahmed Ait Moha says that Wilders could not use the research data in this way, because the questions in the research were about the struggle against president Assad, and not about ISIS. Ruud Koopmans did research about the rules in the Qur'an, which Wilders used in his argument that 75 percent of Dutch Muslims would prefer the Sharia law over the Dutch law. Wilders said that the holy book should be removed from government offices. Wilders also believes there should be a regulation to force everyone in The Netherlands with a passport from an Islamic country should sign an anti-Sharia declaration. According to the Algemeen Dagblad, PvdA-leader Diederik Samsom called Wilders' ideas reminiscent of "the darkest periods of our history", and accused Wilders of hate-breeding.