“Myth of Muslim Support for Terror”
Feb 25th, 2007 | 23 responses
On top is the heading of the article Kenneth Ballen wrote in The Christian Science Monitor. “The common enemy is violence and terrorism, not Muslims any more than Christians or Jews.
“Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.
“The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland’s prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that ‘bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians’ are ‘never justified,’ while 24 percent believe these attacks are ‘often or sometimes justified’.
“Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world’s most-populous Muslim countries – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow, the organization I lead, found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are ‘never justified’; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.
“Do these findings mean that Americans are closet terrorist sympathizers?
“Hardly. Yet, far too often, Americans and other Westerners seem willing to draw that conclusion about Muslims. Public opinion surveys in the United States and Europe show that nearly half of Westerners associate Islam with violence and Muslims with terrorists. Given the many radicals who commit violence in the name of Islam around the world, that’s an understandable polling result.”
A recent poll indicates that a staggering majority of the people in the world, of all religious persuasions, are peace-loving and oppose terrorism. A very small number of religious fanatics on all sides, seemingly aided and abetted by myopic political leadership, are holding the world to ransom.
In a recent joint BBC World Service-Sydney Morning Herald poll, 52 per cent said conflicting interests were the primary reason for tensions between Islam and the West, compared with 29 per cent who thought religion and culture were to blame.
“A global majority, according to the poll, rejects the idea, popularised by the American academic Samuel P. Huntington, of an inevitable clash of civilisations based on religion and culture.
“A poll-topping 68 per cent of Australians blamed ‘intolerant minorities on both sides’ of the Islam/West divide for stirring up tensions. Only one in 10 Australians surveyed blamed intolerant Muslims exclusively.
” ‘Two out of three people in Australia understand that there are those on all sides of this question who just love to stir’,” said Paul Korbel, of Market Focus International, the pollster that conducted the survey here.
“Of all people surveyed, twice as many (56 per cent) believe ‘common ground can be found’ as those who see violent conflict between Islam and the West as inevitable (28 per cent).
“Despite the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the debacle in Iraq, and tensions between Islam and other faiths that are frequently highlighted by politicians and the media, most people remain optimistic.
“While the world’s problems are seen as fundamentally political and economic in nature, most of those polled in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe also blamed intolerant minorities for stirring up tensions. Australians in particular (80 per cent) were inclined to this view.”
The Christian Science Monitor provides different dimensions of the poll as reported in the media.
I came across another interesting site which talked about jihad. Please click here to read more.
For details of the BBC poll result click here.
23 Responses to ““Myth of Muslim Support for Terror””
“A poll-topping 68 per cent of Australians blamed ‘intolerant minorities on both sides’ of the Islam/West divide for stirring up tensions. Only one in 10 Australians surveyed blamed intolerant Muslims exclusively.
� ‘Two out of three people in Australia understand that there are those on all sides of this question who just love to stir’,� said Paul Korbel, of Market Focus International, the pollster that conducted the survey here.
“Of all people surveyed, twice as many (56 per cent) believe ‘common ground can be found’ as those who see violent conflict between Islam and the West as inevitable (28 per cent).
islam passive? You can’t possibly believe that. For God’s sake, look at the HISTORY of islam. It is a history of centuries of violent aggression, subjugation, oppression and slaughter of indiginous peoples from the Middle East to north Africa to India to Europe etc, which still goes on today. It is a history of destroying the cultures and religions of other people and islamizing and arabizing them.
And if we want to discuss polls, a poll taken of British muslims showed that 40% wanted to live under sharia law rather than British law. You can hardly call that a tiny minority. We in the west ignore the threat of islam at our own peril. And I’m sorry to say Swaraaj, that you are among those with your head buried in the sand.
Thank you Laura for the reminder. My wife too believes I am an ostrich…
“Myth of Muslim Support for Terrorâ€?…
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Laura, if you wish to call upon history, then I suggest you look at the HISTORY of Christianity with a bias towards seeking violence and intolerance, and you will find just as many instances as you will find from Islam.
I can condemn Christianity just as much as Islam if I go by HISTORY.
I can condemn the WEST just as much as ANY other culture if I go by HISTORY.
You should learn HISTORY before you use it to justify you own prejudices towards your own culture.
Laura,
The poll numbers in Britain regarding a preference for Sharia law does not really fit in a consideration of terrorism.
It would be interesting to discuss how immigrant Muslims deal with the fact that they must obey the laws of the country they live in, but that’s another topic.
Jack, the vast difference is that Christianity evolved and progressed, while islam is still stuck in the seventh century.
domajot, the point is that the poll shows that a very large percentage of British muslims are extremists and don’t share our western values. I don’t know about you, but I think that is dangerous to our civilization.
Laura, like Dan Pipes – “Those brown skinned people smell funny and their food smells bad”.
We ought to be prejudice towards our own civilization because it is superior to islam, which is a misogynist culture that brutally oppresses women and is anathema to our western ideals of tolerance and freedom and so forth. Stop perpetuating the PC garbage that all cultures and civilizations are equally worthy. A civilization which sanctifies “honor killings”, practices beheadings, hangs homosexuals among other medieval, barbaric practices is not worthy of our respect. It amazes me how so many western liberals, claiming to champion the rights of women and gays, tolerates and defends such brutal fascism in the name of multiculturalism.
rudi, you are completely out of touch with reality. But that is typical of today’s western left.
Those people who sanctify the brutal murder of women in the name of “honor”. Those people that still practice beheadings and other barbaric actions in just about every muslim country.
Let us be honest. Much of what is claimed in the article is true. But we do not need to look to history to see intolerance on either side. But look at Saudi Arabia and Wahabbism. Look at the kinds of things they teach their children. How much of this hatred is spread through the Islamic world by Saudi money paying for madrassahs that spread hatred? I think the poll simply displays hypocrisy. With one side of their mouths they speak of how they don’t support terrorism. With the other side they spout philosophies that are terrorism’s justification. Both sides dehumanize the other but oil money spreads it through far more people than the disorganized bigotry of some of the West. Let’s see them honestly address that problem.
I can see your point. The fact that, of the literally thousands of terrorist attacks that take place each and every year, almost all are conducted by Muslims might tend to give people the mistaken impression that most Muslims support terrorism. The policy conundrum is how to deal with the situation that, although not all Muslims are terrorists nor do they support terrorism, most terrorists are Muslims.
Looking at an article just “downstream” makes me wonder if the poll reflected very much of the public opinion in Pakistan, especially the area bordering Afghanistan.
Laura says:
Those people who sanctify the brutal murder of women in the name of “honor�. Those people that still practice beheadings and other barbaric actions in just about every muslim country.
Look in your own house, most attacks on women are from within their own family. A big new topic is child abduction by strangers. But 99% of abduction and child killing comes from family and friends. One could say that the US culture is just as barbaric towards women and children, if we cherry pick the stories.
But Rudi- our laws are written to protect women and children. Sharia law favors men, and women and children are viewed as property. A woman who commits adultery will be stoned, while the male gets off scot free. Also, look at the Taliban, who cut off hands and feet, if they believed you’d cooperated with the enemy or violated Sharia. They turned that football stadium in Afghanistan into a site for public executions.
If I was to come up with a comparison, it would be that even though our laws are fair, our government is willing to bend our law and is not subject to international law- in situations of rights of detainees, torture, renditions, etc. In that respect, our society is barbaric.
Laura has a point. But the issue here is different. We live in a world that has diversity – cultural, religious, economic and political. It is foolhardy to hope to change the people and their lifestyle overnight by invading countries. By doing that we create a climate of confrontation and violence. Change is inevitable.
We need peaceful campaigns not forcible conversions, especially when the other religion’s roots go back deep in history. If one studies Islam it has seen its glorious past as well as brutal past and present. There was a time in history when women enjoyed great respect in the Arab world.
The rise of Wahabis, or extreme conservatism, in Islam was owing to murderous factional fights between Arab tribes in recent times. Although this movement suppressed the intra-tribe violence and fights, there has been no powerful reformist movement to restore basic social/political freedoms.
So anger, hurt and retribution on the part of the West would not solve any problem. Please remember that the US has been supporting such Arab regimes in the recent past. This has complicated the issue because the Arab common people are not necessarily happy or support their rulers.
It is the common people (especially women and children) who are suffering the most, caught between their own rulers and now the might of the US and western forces.
[...] We had interesting comments that followed two TMV posts – The Lessons of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ by Shaun Mullen, and my post on Myth of Muslim Support for Terror [...]
[...] We had interesting comments that followed two TMV posts – The Lessons of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ by Shaun Mullen, and my post on Myth of Muslim Support for Terror [...]
Hi, guys, I’m new here to this blog post thing.
Anyways, as for Laura’s comments,
“We ought to be prejudice towards our own civilization because it is superior to islam, which is a misogynist culture that brutally oppresses women and is anathema to our western ideals of tolerance and freedom and so forth.”
A misogynistic culture? I suppose it is worth nothing that Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkey have had women heads of state in just the past few decades. (Wiki, it if you don’t believe me. Also note that these Indonesia, alone have more Muslims than the Arab world + Afghanistan combined, so I would use these Arab countries as examples of most muslims worldwide.) Furthermore, the Quran highlights very specific rights for women. Such, the rights of property, the rights of mutual consent with spouses, spiritual equality, so forth. Look at 33:35, 4:19, 9:17, and dozens of others in the Quran.
Another snippette of Laura’s comments,
“Those people who SANCTIFY the brutal murder of women in the name of “honor  Those people that still practice beheadings and other barbaric actions IN JUST ABOUT EVERY muslim country.”
Yeah…I think Laura would really just want to see Muslims “behind razor wire fences” (In the words of the ever-so great, Glenn Beck, my hero!)
She attempts to dehumanize Muslims by stating non-fact. First of all, thousands of muslims worldwide have denounced such actions by their more stupid Muslim brethern. To suggest that Muslims sanctify these atrocities is downright wrong. In addition, once again, such issues of beheading and “other barbaric” actions, are rarities and only seen in a few Muslim countries, no more significantly different then Western countries and their pedophiles, rapists, abortion clinic murders, and other pathological people.
I’d recommend that Laura make factual statements, maybe even read the Quran before making such harsh judgements.
* so I wouldn’t use these arab countries… Sorry, guys.