The latest Atlantic Monthly highlights a Pew report on Muslim public opinion covering Britain, France, Germany and Spain to Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Jordan. The Atlantic confirms that Muslims in the West are more moderate and have a more favourable view of Westerners than their co-religionists in the developing world. Among an array of other opinions I thought the following to be very interesting:
[W]hile European Muslims are more likely than Muslims elsewhere to admit that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks, pluralities in Britain, Germany, and Spain still insist that someone else took down the Twin Towers.
Here is the breakdown (note that the UK is only 1% off of Pakistan and Indonesia):
Mixed Signals
Comments to this entry
Richard
August 13, 2006
3:58 pm
By the way, can someone tell me if the Arab/Muslim world was outraged, as they are in the case of Lebanon, with the still continuing carnage in Darfur?
Curzon
August 13, 2006
10:02 pm
Interesting to note that its the countries where Muslims have been victims of Muslims terrorism (Jordan, Nigeria, Egypt) with the highest proportion of those who believe the 9/11 terrorists were Arabs.
sun bin
August 13, 2006
11:00 pm
Elizabeth
August 14, 2006
4:05 am
Not because I don't believe the press, but because I would have guessed there'd be at least a few Pakistanis, Berbers, or whatever in with them. I would have been mistaken (have since looked it up) but that would still have shown up in the statistics.
How many 2nd-generation Muslim housewives called out to their 14-year-old sons during that poll- "Ahmed, where were those 9/11 hijackers from? Do you know?" and got the response, "I don't know, maybe Afghanistan?"
Elizabeth
August 14, 2006
4:31 am
They didn't survey Russian Muslims as a separate group. Perhaps they don't know that something like 15 - 20% of Russia is Muslim if there are indeed 25 million Muslims among 150 million inhabitants, and Moscow is thought to have the largest Muslim population of any European city.
Typical... it's things like this that prevent us from learning more from the failures of Russia and the USSR to meet the challenge of Islamic terrorism.
412 Precondition Failed
August 14, 2006
1:47 pm
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » A matter of opinion II
August 15, 2006
3:34 pm
Kirk H. Sowell
August 16, 2006
1:26 am
The answer generally is no, not even close, there isn't much outrage about the massacres in the Sudan or Darfur in the "Arab street." That is not to say that it is ignored, as the int'l Arab media that I follow - mainly Al-Hayat and Al-Jazeera - have covered it a lot. And unlike in Lebanon (and elsewhere), their coverage has been pretty neutral, they haven't played up the fact that the govt is supporting the killing but they haven't ignored the other side. But Arab publics generally have not been outraged or really moved by it. Only Egypt is directly affected, and they have been beating up Sudanese refugees.
Furthermore, the Arab League, which makes the United Nations look like the Global Font of Virtue and Moral Backbone, has simply supported Khartoum. It would be disgusting if there were any reason at all to expect the Arab League to behave differently, but their isn't.
In terms of Curzon's larger point, don't expect for reactions in the countries in question to mirror reality to any real extent. Remember that suicide bombers are called "martyrs" in the mainstream Arab media as long as they are blowing up Jews.
jon
August 16, 2006
3:27 pm
alec
August 16, 2006
10:31 pm
Elizabeth
August 17, 2006
1:22 am
Al Qaeda, now that's a different story, since they did claim credit. In addition, our dear conspiracy theorists among Islamic fundamentalist terrorists have already accounted for its responsibility by insisting that Al Qaeda is actually run by the CIA.
‘Did Arabs carry out the 9/11 attacks?’ at DPRK Studies
November 5, 2006
5:02 pm