Attitudes of world Muslims

The respected US Pew Research Center released its findings about Muslims and their aspirations around the world last month. The survey is an interesting one, given its outcome, its subject and its timing. The survey assumes significance as it represents the most comprehensive coverage so far. As part of the survey, the research center carried out 38,0000 face-to-face interviews in 39 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East in more than 80 languages.
The findings come at a time when the Middle East region is engulfed in turmoil for more than two years with Islamist groups occupying a prominent role in this tumultuous period. Meanwhile, a number of African countries, notably in the Sahel and the Horn of the continent, are witnessing resurgence of extremists.
In this backdrop many questions are being asked about these emerging groups, their outlook, aspirations and what impact they may have on the political landscape both regionally and internationally.
The survey was in fact conducted in two phases. The first part was carried out between 2008/2009, concentrating mainly on Sub-Saharan Africa, where 15 countries in that region were surveyed and the findings released three years ago in a report entitled “Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa.” The second survey was conducted between 2011 and last year, where 24 countries in Europe, Asia, Middle East, in addition to Africa, were surveyed, resulting in the report that was released last month under the title “The World’s Muslims: Unity and Diversity.”
The first finding in the survey is that followers of the second largest faith on earth are committed to their religion and want it to govern not only their personal lives, but guide the political, social and economic principles in governing their states and civil societies. Other findings include that Muslims are comfortable with using Islamic law, or Shariah in their lives and that they don’t feel any inherent tension between being observant Muslim and a part of a modern society, nor there is a conflict between Islam and sciences. More significant in the findings is the rejection of violence and suicide bombings as a mean to further the political cause of Islam or to fight injustice against Muslims and half of those surveyed say they are concerned about Muslim extremists in their countries.
Percentages in specific countries paint a clearer picture: In Egypt for instance 67 percent showed their disapproval of extremism and attacks on civilians, the same percentage of people polled in Tunisia and Iraq voiced their opposition to violence. Is should be noted that these three countries are undergoing radical changes in their political setup.
In Guinea Bissau 72 percent of respondents and in Indonesia, that hosts the biggest Muslim minority, 78 percent disapproved using violence against civilians. Indonesia has been a theater for such violence years ago.
The importance of this survey is that it reads the hearts and minds and gives a general outline for how more than 1.6 billion Muslim people think and feel. It gets an additional value bearing in mind that Islam is the second largest faith on earth, representing 23 percent out of 5.8 billion living on the globe who are associated with some kind of faith.
This strong affiliation with Islam could be attributed to the failures of various social, political and economic policies adopted in various parts of the world especially the developing countries, which came out of the colonialism period with high hopes to be broken with malpractices, political instability and failures in all endeavors to build a nation state that caters to its people and satisfy their aspirations.
However, there are no concrete answers to many questions that riddle today’s political scene in the region, but there is one logical question to ask why such surveys are not conducted in the region by indigenous organizations. There are enough think tanks, universities and research institutes with reasonable history, background and resources to carry out such surveys and come out with some conclusions that could be a base for policies stemming out of realities, not fantasies of ideologies as has been the case for so long time.

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