[Music] you may have seen the headlines around this new survey claiming that arabs are becoming less religious the study compiled by bbc news arabic and the research group our barometer claims that there has been a dramatic rise in arabs no longer identifying as religious generating sensational and triumphant headlines across western media outlets but how reliable is this claim there are major issues with the study as well as the way it's been reported on firstly the study is not properly representative a number of nations have been left out of the survey saudi arabia oman kuwait and
syria and researchers admit they were unable to complete the survey properly in a number of the countries where they were present and let's take a look at how the results are being reported on according to the bbc the study claims that since 2013 the number of people across the region identifying as not religious has risen from eight percent to 13 this is a five percent difference hardly a major development especially if you consider that the researchers have stated that the survey's margin of error is three percent the statistic is also a gross generalization as the
results actually varied drastically from society to society the guardian discussed the survey and reported a generalized in a lack of religiosity from 11 to 18 but this is in fact a statistic specific to young people not the entire survey group questions about the survey's independence have also been raised last year our barometer received two million dollars in funding from the u.s state department the idea of such a survey was ostensibly to create a more nuanced understanding of a misunderstood region unfortunately it seems to have fed into a cycle of careless reporting and even more generalizations
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