The Quran is written in idioms and is riddled with assumptions of ancient societies. Like the Bible. In the battle of the holy books, the Quran has one disadvantage: Only about 20% of Muslims speak Arabic as their first language. Yet since Muslims usually consider the Quran to be a literal message from God to Muhammad, Muslim scholars are reluctant to translate it. The worldwide distribution of the Quran today is led by Saudi benefactors. This invites controversy since the influential translations may be biased toward Wahabbism, a rather less tolerant brand of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia. Christian interpreters, on the other side, have a history of mistranslating Islam with the express purpose of discrediting it. Ultimately then, the key question may not be what is written in a particular translation of the Quran but what do Muslims say the Quran says.
Some of the prominent pitfalls of judgement likely to affect the debates about Islam include so-called attribution bias and naive realism. The first trap describes a tendency to attribute an outcome to choices of involved actors even though evidence suggests an influence of external triggers and constraints. Such bias thus may for instance contribute to the notion that the lower standard of civil liberties in the Arab part of the Muslim world is the result of the free choice of Arab Muslims. Naive realism then stands for a general disposition of debaters to assume that those who disagree with us must be uninformed, stupid or biased.
Portraying migrants as parasites exploiting the generosity of the German welfare system is baseless and misleading. Economic studies show that in the long term, the economy benefits – or, at least, tends not to lose from the presence of migrants. There is no research whatsoever that would prove it should be any different if the migrants come from “distant cultural spheres“. In the short term, however, migrants may represent a small burden for the public budget. Also, if retraining opportunities are poor, unlimited migration can put low-skilled domestic workers at risk of short-term unemployment or at least a minor reduction in wages.
Some of the most prominent biases that may affect our judgement about refugees and migrants are negativity bias and selective perception. The first one describes a finding that negative (threatening) stimuli often impress people more strongly than positive or neutral ones. Selective perception represents a tendency to give more weight to expected over surprising information. To fact-checkers, it is important to know that a confrontation with a correction may easily strengthen people’s previously held beliefs. Therefore, fact-checkers must use strategies that alleviate this backfire effect.
Studies suggest that almost all children, including the Roma or the children with moderate disabilities, can benefit both socially and academically from inclusive schools. Much of the public thinks otherwise. Largely, it is because most parents are misinformed, and most teachers have been left to cope with new challenges on their own. In some regions, Czech Roma students often continue to be sent to primary schools for intellectually disabled. Their placement in less demanding schools may well be the biggest factor behind their comparably higher unemployment. Meanwhile, salaries of Czech teachers remain the worst among all OECD countries. Without a credible commitment to a continuous salary increase, pedagogical faculties will remain to be the first choice only for less talented applicants. Meanwhile, a model from IDEA CERGE-EI has shown that an education reform could increase the gross natinal product by 150 billion Kč (€ 5.5 billion) annualy.
People sincerely antipathetic towards the Roma often say they rely on unfavourable experiences with a life along their side.” But the antipathies do not result only from experience and often unverified gossip. If Non-Roma want to see a Roma justly, they must actively resist mechanisms of prejudices such as the out-group homogeneity bias. This bias represents a double standard because of which people differentiate well in the behaviour of members of the group in which they feel at home (in-group) but tend to see the acts of members of a foreign group (out-group) as common to them all. Another important condition of a productive debate about topics related to the Roma is to differentiate between the disagreements about realities and the disagreements about causes: for instance, claims about the level of un/employment of the Roma and the factors that affect the un/employment of some of them.
Újságíró csapatunk egy a slow movement inspirálta kezdeményezés. Ami összetart minket, az a szilárd elköteleződésünk a tényeken alapuló kutatások iránt . Az Appalache-hegységtől Indonéziáig 200 kiváló tudósítón és szakértőn keresztül gazdagítjuk a kelet-európai diskurzust olyan témákkal, mint az iszlám kultúra, bevándorlás vagy a romák helyzete.
Weboldalunk magyar nyelvű változata terveink szerint 2019-ra jelenik meg. Ha segítesz nekünk, felgyorsíthatjuk ezt a folyamatot: szükségünk van magyar szerkesztőkre, újságírókra, akik könnyedén találnak utat az újságírói nyelvezet és a tudományos világ között (gondolj például az Economist újságíróira). Segíthetsz nekünk gyakornokként is- irodában vagy a terepen. Ha nem beszélnél angolul, akkor is szívesen vesszük jelentkezésedet az editor@datalyrics.org email címen.
Ha nem szeretnél várni, olvass minket angolul.