Talk:Religion in Kuwait/Archive 1

Archive 1

Sunni/Shia percentage

There's been a recent push to change the Sunni/Shia percentage to 60:40.

Previous Kuwait articles either used the Pew report (75:25 to 80:20)[1] or CIA Factbook(70:30).[2] Although at first glance the Pew report looks more reliable than the CIA Factbook, its methodology is effectively "we asked some experts to guess", so in fact it's no better. Given that the CIA Factbook is more recent and updated annually, I've used it across Kuwait articles for the ratio. Both the CIA and the US DoS Religious Freedom Report[3] agree on the 70:30 split (the DoS indicates that it's derived from "voting records and personal status documents").

The 1991 LA Times[4] article is nearly worthless; it fails because it's (a) 30 years old vs. the annually updated Factbook and (b) it's written by someone (& for a publication) with no special interest in or connection to Kuwait vs. CIA or US DoS intelligence analysts. The only thing you can say in its favour is that it's likely not trying to push a position.

The other cite used to support the 60:40 split is a recent Arab Times article.[5] As source, this is much better than the LA Times, as it's both recent and interested in Kuwait. However, reading it, you see it refers to the US DoS Religious Freedom report[6], which states 70:30. It then goes on to say: "However, the confirmed information shows the Kuwaiti government has 'a secret percentage' about the number of the Shiites in Kuwait which exceeds 30 percent. "In other words, the actual percentage of Kuwaiti Shiites is 40 percent."

The US Religious Freedoms report does not say this, so presumably this is a reference in slightly clunky English to information the writer wants us to believe that they are privy to. As they don't provide any support for it though, it is worthless. Additionally, it's not even logically consistent, in that the "fact" it gives (>30%) is not the same as the conclusion it puts forward (40%).

Consequently, I'd need to see better support for a change up from 30%, as the current information we have on WP (i.e. the Pew report) is that if anything it should be less than that. Bromley86 (talk) 07:53, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

SheraziSalman recently added support for the 60:40 position. There was one from an online newspaper, Middle East Online,[7] and another from a Turkish think-tank, ISRO/USAK[8]

Middle East Online appears to be a news re-posting site that largely does not generate it's own content. It often does not attribute articles to source. In this particular case, the article appears to have been taken entirely from a AFP article[9] (with an attribution within the actual text of the article excised, which is very poor behaviour: "Shatti told AFP by phone" becomes "Shatti said by phone") and then had the picture & caption added. It is only in the caption that 40% is mentioned, therefore it's worthless. And, even if it were not, the caption says 20-40%, which is effectively the same as saying "there are no official figures, but thought to be around 30%". Not that the article says that at the moment, but it probably should as the whole reason for this uncertainty is the lack of official figures.

The USAK paper looked promising. Although only mentioned in a note, it is mentioned: "For instance, the 10-15% of the population of Saudi Arabia is Shiite. The percentage becomes higher when to Kuwait with And in Bahrain, the majority of the population is Shiite with 60% of the total population. "). Further, the author has referenced his source for the information, including page ref: International Crisis Group , ‘The Shiite Question in Saudi Arabia’, Middle East Report, No:45, 19 September 2005, p.1.[10] On page 1 of that paper (page 5 of the PDF linked), we indeed see the sentence "Saudi Arabia's roughly two million Shiites represent between 10 and 15 per cent"; however, there is no mention there or elsewhere of the 40% Kuwait figure (nor of the 60% Bahraini one). So it looks like a guess. Bromley86 (talk) 18:18, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

An IP editor added another source for 40%.[11] The Islamic Thought Foundation is an Iranian entity, which means they may well be partial on the Shia question. It states: "According to the latest census made in 2001 in Kuwait, Shiites constitute about 30%." This is incorrect, as the census does not determine Sunni/Shia.

It then says: "Shiites argue that their population is responsible for at least 40% of people living in Kuwait". This is weak, especially given the risk of partiality of the ITF. Further, it doesn't actually say that it's talking about citizens. Clearly 40% of all people in Kuwait are not Shiite. So we're still looking for a good cite for 40%. Bromley86 (talk) 08:50, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Same person found a 30% cite.[12] However, that's just a restatement of the CIA Factbook. You can tell by the format and, if you load up the 2008 Factbook, you can see all the figures match. Bromley86 (talk) 09:02, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Another couple of cites provided by SheraziSalman.

• The Atlantic Council[13] one is pretty damn good and has won me over. I can't see any obvious reason for them to spin the data and they appear, to my cursory check, to be sufficiently high-brow that they're not going to make stuff up. They say "Shiites comprise . . . 40% in Kuwait".
• The second[14] is less useful, as "the Stanford Progressive is an independent, student-run magazine." I.e. not a mainstream news outlet or similar, so no good. Bromley86 (talk) 17:16, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Found the original source of the Atlantic Council article. It was the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, so that's perfectly acceptable.  Done Bromley86 (talk) 17:39, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Just had a look at the Pew report that says 20-25% of Muslims in Kuwait are Shia.[15] There's something very wrong with their data. On p.16 they say that Kuwait is one of the countries with a population ~95% Muslims. On p.29 we see the Muslim population they're estimating in 2009 is 2,824,000 (with -95% of people being Muslim; presumably it's close to 95%, otherwise they wouldn't have included Kuwait in the "~95% or greater" sentence on p.16). On p.10 we see they give the 2009 Shia population as 500k-700k. That makes sense internally, as 0.2 * 2,824k = 565k and 0.25 * 2,824k = 706k, i.e. 500k-700k (ish).

Pew are operating with a total population of ~3m (2.824/0.94); we know this is total, rather than citizen, because (a) Pew are concerned with the total world Shia, not the citizen Shia and (b) because all sources give the non-citizen proportion as between a half and two-thirds and none give a total population of around 6m. However, from the 2009 DoS Religious Freedom report, there were 1.16m non-Muslims (600k Hindus, 450k Christians, 110k others), effectively entirely non-citizen. There's a big difference in the total populations between the two reports (3.0m vs. 3.8m), but that doesn't directly affect the DoS' estimation of non-Muslims. Even if the DoS have overestimated by a factor of 100%, there's no way to reconcile that with a total population of 3m and a Muslim proportion of ~95%. Bottom line, no way is 95% of the total population Muslim, so the Pew figures are suspect. Bromley86 (talk) 11:07, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Proportion of Muslims (citizens)

We've been using the CIA Factbook[16] up until now; that's fine, as it's a common reference on WP and (AFAIK) reviewed at least annually. However, there's a problem. The current DoS' Religious Freedom Report[17] claims that effectively 100% of citizens are Muslim (200 Christian citizens and a few Bahai out of 1.2m), whereas the CIA claim it's 85% (presumably they're referring to citizens). Not sure how to square that circle, as the 2005 Kuwaiti census doesn't seem to state religious background.

Without stepping too far into the territory of original research, it does appear to be relatively hard in Kuwait to publicly become a non-Muslim having previously been a Muslim (the parliament recently passed a law making apostasy a capital crime, but the Emir vetoed it).[18] So my inclination is to believe the DoS over the CIA on this one. Perhaps the CIA are referring to practicing Muslims when they say 85%, but how would they gather that data? Bromley86 (talk) 18:18, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

If I don't hear otherwise, I'll assume the Religious Freedom Report has it right (@100%) and change the articles accordingly. Bromley86 (talk) 13:34, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

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