Survey of Muslims

SAN-Feature Service
SOUTH ASIAN NEWS-FEATURE SERVICE
Washington, June 23, 2006

Survey of Muslim, Western Attitudes Portrays Mixed Picture

While majorities in nearly every surveyed country responded that relations between Muslims and Westerners generally are bad, more specific questions revealed a more nuanced pattern of inter-communal perceptions.

SAN-Feature Service : - Solid majorities of the American, French and British publics hold favorable views of Muslims even as real differences between Muslim and non-Muslim communities persist. The data appears in a 15-nation global attitudes survey released June 22 by The Pew Global Attitudes Project, which describes the overall picture as "more mixed than unremittingly negative." Former Secretary of State Madeline K. Albright, former U.S. Senator and Ambassador to the United Nations John C. Danforth and Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut analyzed the data at a Washington press conference.

A MIXED PICTURE While majorities in nearly every surveyed country responded that relations between Muslims and Westerners generally are bad, more specific questions revealed a more nuanced pattern of inter-communal perceptions. Differences between European and non-European Muslims suggest that frequent contact between communities helps dispel negative stereotypes. While Western publics were divided on the prospects for democracy in Muslim countries, solid and even overwhelming majorities of Muslim respondents both in Europe and in Muslim countries held that ï¿½democracy can work wellï¿½ in most Muslim nations. The survey revealed declining confidence in Osama bin Laden among most Muslim publics. The trend is most pronounced in Jordan, where a November 2005 terrorist attack killed 63 and injured more than 100 people in Amman. Confidence in the al-Qaida chief declined from 60 percent a year ago to just 24 percent now. Majorities in Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia also express either "not too much" or "no confidence at all" in bin Laden.
    Respondents in Pakistan and in Nigeria, whose Muslim community consistently expressed more radical opinions than publics in other Muslim nations, offered bin Laden plurality or majority support.The percentage of Muslims answering that suicide bombings and other violence against civilian targets could be justified in some circumstances declined in Jordan, Pakistan and Indonesia, but increased slightly in Turkey. Even so, nearly three-in-ten Jordanian and Egyptian Muslims condoned suicide bombings, as did one-in-seven Turkish, French, Spanish, British and Pakistani Muslims. And majorities in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan ï¿½ and 56 percent of British Muslims ï¿½ say they do not believe that groups of Arabs carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
    Muslims also were less likely than non-Muslims to perceive a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in what the poll framers called a "modern society."The data revealed other differences between the two groups. Each tended to blame the other for perceived bad relations and disagreed over the root causes underlying the recent controversy over cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark. Majorities in the United States, France, Britain and Russia -- but not in Germany or Spain -- expressed favorable views of Muslims. Majorities of Indonesians and Jordanians -- but not Egyptians, Pakistanis or Turks -- expressed favorable views of Christians. In every Muslim country surveyed, overwhelming or near unanimous majorities expressed negative views toward Jews. The figure reached 99 percent in Jordan, 98 percent in Egypt and 94 percent in Pakistan. Twenty-eight percent of Jordanians and 22 percent of Egyptians volunteered that "Jews" were to blame for bad relations between Muslims and the West, although Jews were not mentioned in the question.
    European Muslims generally expressed more positive views toward Christians and somewhat less negative views toward Jews than did Muslims elsewhere. Senator Danforth called those figures "evidence that interaction helps. The more we know each other, the better off we are." The recent controversy over publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad illustrated further differences between Muslims and non-Muslims. Majorities throughout the West blamed "Muslim intolerance" for the dispute, while even larger proportions of Muslims blamed "Western disrespect."
    Secretary Albright suggested that policy differences over Iraq, Israel/Palestine and the general turmoil in the Middle East contributed to, but were not the sole cause, of difficult relations between Muslims and the West. She suggested that policymakers make better use of religious leaders both as resources for mutual understanding and as "validators" capable of building public support for diplomatic arrangements. Danforth said Muslim dislike of perceived Western values was a bigger factor. He cited figures in which majorities of non-European Muslim respondents to the Pew poll concluded that Westerners were selfish, arrogant and violent -- and suggested that television and other mass media contributed to the propagation of those views.
      Co-chaired by Albright and Danforth, the Pew Global Attitudes Project is a series of worldwide public opinion surveys on a broad array of subjects from people's assessments of their own lives to their view about the current state of the world and important issues of the day.---SAN-Feature Service/ The Washington File