WASHINGTON - The world views of Muslims
and Westerners in many respects are mirror images,
according to the results of a major new survey,
which suggests that European Muslims, who held the
most tolerant views, could be a bridge between the
two groups.
"Many in the West see Muslims
as fanatical, violent and ... lacking tolerance,"
according to an analysis of the survey by the
Washington-based Pew Global Attitudes Project.
"Muslims in the Middle East and Asia generally see
Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy as well
as violent and fanatical."
But the survey
also found that was less true among European
Muslims. "In many ways, the views of Europe's
Muslims represent a middle ground between the way
Western publics and
Muslims in the Middle East and
Asia view each other," it said.
The survey
and analysis, which were released by Pew in
Washington on Thursday, found that positive views
held by Muslims of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
and terror tactics associated with him have
declined over the past year, quite substantially
in Pakistan and Jordan, where suicide attacks
killed more than 50 people in Amman hotels over
the past year.
At the same time, the
percentage of Muslims who believe that Arabs did
not carry out the September 11, 2001, attacks on
New York and the Pentagon has increased.
Majorities in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan
and among the Muslim community in Britain doubt
that Arabs had any role.
The survey, which
was carried out in 13 countries from the beginning
of April until mid-May, found that negative views
of Muslims had become especially pronounced in
Germany and Spain, where only 36% and 29% of
respondents, respectively, expressed favorable
opinions of Muslims. Both marked major declines
from the last Pew poll one year ago.
By
contrast, nearly two-thirds of French and British
citizens said they had favorable views of Muslims.
Fifty-six percent of Russians agreed with that
opinion, as did 54% of US respondents.
Interestingly, British and French
respondents were the most upbeat as well about the
prospects for democracy in Muslim countries. Six
in 10 respondents in France and Britain said
democracy could work well there, while only 49% of
US citizens and an average of four in 10 Spanish
and Germans agreed.
More than 60% of
Indonesians and Jordanians said they had favorable
views of Christians, followed by 48% of Egyptians.
But only about one-quarter of Pakistanis
described their views as favorable, while only
about one in seven Turks agreed, a possible
reflection of growing anti-European and anti-US
opinion resulting from negotiations over Turkey's
admission to the European Union and the popular
anger there against the US invasion of Iraq.
By contrast, Muslims living in Europe were
much more positive about Christians, one of a
number of indications in the survey that European
Muslims are not only considerably less alienated
from the societies in which they reside than many
recent analyses have suggested, but also that they
could act as a moderating force in the
Muslim-Western divide.
Nine out of 10
French Muslims said they had positive views of
Christians, followed by eight out of 10 Spanish
Muslims (in spite of the strongly anti-Muslim
views of most Spanish). Roughly seven out of 10
English and German Muslims also said their views
of Christians were favorable.
Of all
Muslim populations surveyed, French Muslims were
by far the most positive toward Jews - 71% said
they had favorable opinions, roughly twice the
percentage of Muslims in Britain, Germany and
Spain.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world,
views of Jews were far more negative: in
Indonesia, 17% of respondents said they had
favorable opinions; in Turkey, 15%; in Pakistan
6%; and in the two Arab countries surveyed, Egypt
and Jordan, only 2% and 1%, respectively.
As to relations between Muslims and
Westerners, majorities in 10 out of 12 countries
described them as "generally bad". In Europe, the
most negative views were found in Germany (70%
said "generally bad") and France (66%). Fifty-five
percent of US respondents described it the same
way.
Turkey was the most negative of the
predominantly Muslim nations, with nearly
two-thirds opting for "generally bad" - although
77% of Nigerian Muslims made the same assessment -
followed by Egypt (58%), Jordan (54%) and
Indonesia (53%). Pakistan, where a slight
plurality said that relations were "generally
good", was the only exception.
The Pew
analysis concluded that Muslims held "an aggrieved
view of the West - they were much more likely than
Americans or Western Europeans to blame Western
policies for their own lack of prosperity. For
their part, Western publics instead pointed to
government corruption, lack of education and
Islamic fundamentalism as the biggest obstacles to
Muslim prosperity."
Thus Muslims,
particularly in Asia and the Middle East, tended
to blame the controversy this year over Danish
cartoon depictions of Mohammed on Western
disrespect for Islam. Majorities in the US and
Europe, on the other hand, blamed the crisis on
Muslim intolerance.
In many respects, the
two groups hold mirror images, however. When asked
to choose among a list of negative traits, Muslim
and non-Muslim respondents saw in the other group,
the survey found, that Muslims in the Middle East
and Asia - often by large majorities - generally
viewed Westerners as selfish, arrogant and
violent. European Muslims, particularly those in
France and Spain, however, tended to be far less
damning about the traits of non-Muslims than in
predominantly Muslim countries.
At the
same time, majorities of non-Muslims in Europe
found Muslims to be fanatical and violent,
although only minorities in Britain, the US and
France subscribed to that view.
The
survey's findings suggested that French and
Spanish Muslims were the least alienated from
their surrounding societies, even if the general
public in Spain was found to be the most hostile
toward Muslims of any of the European societies
covered by the poll.
Four in 10 non-Muslim
Spaniards said they believed that most or many
Muslims in their country supported Islamic
extremism, but only 12% of Spanish Muslims agreed.
Of the four minority publics surveyed, British
Muslims were the most critical of their country
and "come closer to views of Muslims around the
world in their opinions of Westerners".
The religious divide was found to be
surprisingly sharp in Nigeria, where, for example,
nearly three out of four Muslims and Christians
ascribed negative traits to the other groups.
Nigerian Muslims also constituted a "conspicuous
exception" to the trend toward declining
confidence in bin Laden in the Muslim world.
More than six in 10 Nigerian Muslims said
they had at least some confidence in the al-Qaeda
leader, up from 44% in 2003. In addition, nearly
half of Nigeria's Muslims said suicide bombings
could be justified often or sometimes in the
defense of Islam.
