How Muslims Think

To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled “The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other,” it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain).

The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three rubrics.

A proclivity to conspiracy theories: In not one Muslim population polled does a majority believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The proportions range from a mere 15 percent in Pakistan holding Arabs responsible, to 48 percent among French Muslims. Confirming recent negative trends in Turkey, the number of Turks who point the finger at Arabs has declined from 46 percent in 2002 to 16 percent today. In other words, in every one of these ten Muslim communities, a majority views 9/11 as a hoax perpetrated by the U.S. government, Israel, or some other agency.

Likewise, Muslims are widely prejudiced against Jews, ranging from 28 percent unfavorable ratings among French Muslims to 98 percent in Jordan (which, despite the monarchy’s moderation, has a majority Palestinian population). Further, Muslims in certain countries (especially Egypt and Jordan) see Jews conspiratorially, as being responsible for bad relations between Muslims and Westerners.

Conspiracy theories also pertain to larger topics. Asked, “What is most responsible for Muslim nations’ lack of prosperity?” between 14 percent (in Pakistan) and 43 percent (in Jordan) blame the policies of the U.S. and other Western states, as opposed to indigenous problems, such as a lack of democracy or education, or the presence of corruption or radical Islam.

This conspiracism points to a widespread unwillingness in the umma to deal with realities, preferring the safer bromides of plots, schemes, and intrigues. It also reveals major problems adjusting to modernity.

Support for terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8 percent (in Turkey) to 72 percent (in Nigeria). Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13 percent (in Germany) to 69 percent (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come.

British and Nigerian Muslims the most alienated: The United Kingdom stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32 percent of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less their counterparts in France (41 percent), Germany (52 percent) or Spain (60 percent). In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations.

But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for 9/11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme.

The situation in Britain reflects the “Londonistan” phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression.

Nigerian Muslims have generally the most belligerent views on such issues as the state of Western-Muslim relations, the supposed immorality and arrogance of Westerners, and support for bin Laden and suicide terrorism. This extremism results, no doubt, from the violent state of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria.

Ironically, most Muslim alienation is found in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best – where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in the U.K., nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria.

Overall, the Pew survey sends an undeniable message of crisis from one end to the other of the Muslim world.

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).

these have been sitting on my profile for some years, now.
I'd feel better if more in the West read 'em and took 'em to heart - for all that they are mmmmmindelicately phrased, they are quite serious admonitions:

***

AN ISLAMOFASCIST'S "TEN COMMANDMENTS"

1. There is no God but Moon-boy
2. Mohammed is his PR man
3. Kill everyone who does not believe Rules 1 and 2
4. Deny continually to those who do not believe Rules 1 and 2 that Rule 3 exists at all.
5. Enslave all women, mutilate them, and dress 'em ugly
6. Repeat Rule 3
7. Repeat Rule 4
8. Repeat Rule 3
9. Repeat Rule 4
10. Repeat Rule 3

***

If ever you find yourself in Muslim lands - especially ARAB Muslim lands! - there are some rules-of-thumb you should bear in mind:

1. Never trust an Arab with anything valuable or important. It is simply just not a good idea.

2. Never believe an Arab's given word. Always accept it, but NEVER stake your life on it.

3. The Arab's "Insh'Allah" is roughly equivalent to a Mexican's "manana" - If an Arab says "XYZ will be done, insh'allah" don't hold your breath.

4. The sum of all opinion on Arabs from all other peoples who have dealt with them over the last 3000 years is that they are vain, prickly, untrustworthy, gullible, and extremely emotional and mercurial.

5. Arab-Islamic culture fosters institutional paranoia and psychotic disconnection from mundane cause-effect logic and reality. It is as if they are perpetual four-year-olds. See 1-4... make sense now?

6. From family members and longtime friends who have had decades of experience in Saudi, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the Arab lands along the Levant and North Africa, a summary: "The only thing an Arab man really understands is getting killed."

7. From personal experience: Individually, Arabs can be the friendliest, most charming, warmest folks on Earth, but... they have the LOWEST "mob-mind" threshhold of any demographic I have encountered: TWO ARABS can easily become a mob-mind.

8. Do not look at or speak to their women in public.

9. Do not DATE or BED their women, period.

10. Never travel in daylight with fewer than two non-Arab companions. Never travel at night with fewer than four non-Arab companions.

11. Do not drink any alcohol while in Arab lands - not a matter of respecting Islamic prohibitions, but a matter of keeping your wits about you.

12. Do not refuse a privately provided meal, but be sure to obey rule #10 and eat nothing your host has not already tasted.

13. Failure to haggle - over ANYTHING - is an insult.

14. Keep your eyes open, your mind clear, your emotions on hold, and your powder dry.

15. Avoid competing with the indigs in any form of discussion, but do NOT back down or agree with them if they attack what they know you believe - to do so signals weakness. Be polite, but be firm.

16. Do not say anything which could be considered a slight on the manhood of Arabs in general or any Arab member of your audience, unless you want to have to kill or be killed.

17. Prepare yourself to be bored with interminable formalities and figures of speech and rote phrases and all other conversational space-filler of this sort.

18. Discount the descriptive adjectives by an intensity factor of one order of magnitude.

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