A new Rasmussen poll shows that the Northwest Airlines attack has seriously increased Americans’ fears about terrorism.
The poll, which was conducted last night, shows that 79% of likely voters think another terrorist attack is likely within the next year. This is up from 49% of Americans who said the same thing in Rasmussen’s poll in August. The new poll also contains 42% of likely voters who think another attack is “very likely,” up from 16% of Americans in August.
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johnpi
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thabet
Familiarity not breeding contempt:
The message? Make friends with your neighbour.
Here’s the Pew Research Center report.
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thabet
Following the Al-Jazeera/Gallup poll, here is another poll on Pakistani views about Taliban, terrorism and the United States, this time by the Pew Research Center. I am not really sure it shows Pakistanis “hate” the US; the results seem more mixed than that.
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thabet
The Economist has a chart on global attitudes towards torture:
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thabet
Pakistani public opinion is still behind behind government’s Swat offensive. (Although no actual poll is cited in this news report…)
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thabet
The BBC has a new poll into British Muslims’ attitudes towards Britain’s role in Afghanistan and the Taliban.
The numbers aren’t broken down by ethnicity, although the accompanying BBC news report concentrates on British Pakistanis.
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johnpi
Pollsters for an outfit called Terror Free Tomorrow have published an op-ed at the Washington Post declaring that Ahmadinejad is the likely rightful winner of the Iranian election based on polls they conducted in Iran. Problem is, their own data and initial conclusions published earlier actually throw doubt on the legitimacy of the election:
Due to the large number of undecideds and the mood of the undecideds, in writing about their own poll, Ballen and Doherty actually predicted a second-round run-off with no one reaching 50%+1. However, when official results come out showing the incumbent winning with 63%, they publish an op-ed in the Washington Post suggesting that the election was clean, based on their own polling?
I don’t know anything about these pollsters. However, it is pretty bizarre to argue, at different times, that a single poll both shows the incumbent likely to not reach 50%, and also that a 63% result for the incumbent was probably legitimate. I really can’t wrap my head around that one. Even though I absolutely hate making implications like this, such a strange turnabout in analysis is enough to make one wonder if there is another agenda at play.
They also misrepresent their own survey in the op-ed:
The poll was conducted from May 11-20, which is actually a range of 24-33 days before the election, not “three weeks.” To call it three weeks instead of providing the actual dates make it sound as though the poll was taken closer to the election than it actually was.
Terror Free Tomorrow is a project of The New America Foundation, “which actively encourages a variety of opinions.” Opinions, OK. Lies and misrepresentions, no thanks.
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johnpi
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thabet
A reader’s complaint about the latest Emirates Airlines ad campaign which uses an Indian consturction worker:
In related news, Arabian Business also has a summary of an ‘independent’ survey of foreign construction workers in Dubai.
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thabet
Speaking of opinion polls about Muslims, a new study by Gallup and the Coexist Foundation shows that British Muslims are more ‘conservative’ than their European brethren when it comes to sexual morality.
Muslims are also likely to identify themselves as ‘British’ more readily than the population at large*.
It will be interesting to see how this survey is presented by Dalia Mogahed in London today. The Muslim West Facts website has the full report.
*Note that the liberal-left Guardian led with the story about British Muslim attitudes towards homosexuality (‘zero tolerance’), while the right-wing Telegraph concentrated on attitudes towards ‘Britishness’. The slant obviously reflects the biases of their editorial teams and readers.
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thabet
Liberal Conspiracy has a piece on the use and abuse of opinion polls when it comes to understanding and reporting the attitudes of Muslims in the UK. Not sure he gets everything right, and I will let others point out the flaws, but looks like a decent starting point for an interesting topic.
That Liberal Conspiracy post also points to a blog called British Born Muslims which claims to have carried out more rigorous survey of Muslim opinion in the UK. Hmmm.
I once asked someone (who is meant to know about these things) about the paltry level of data we have about ‘British Muslims’. He pointed out a study on opinion polls of Islam and Muslims in the UK by Clive Field, entitled “Islamophobia in Contemporary Britain: The Evidence of the Opinion Polls, 1988– 2006″.
A very broad and general conclusion seems to be that we in Britain lack credible data on the category of people known as ‘British Muslims’.
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razib, murtad fitri
the world values survey has some muslim nations in it. in some of them in regards to national identity they asked what the put “first.” e.g., muslim, bangladeshi, bengali, punjabi, pakistani, etc. the nations with data are: Algeria Bangladesh Indonesia Iran Iraq Jordan Kyrgyzstan Morocco Pakistan Saudi Arabia Turkey Egypt
can you guess the %’s who would put “muslim” first? it’s below the fold.
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razib, murtad fitri
checking the world values survey for bosnia. it seems that muslims & catholics cluster together in religiosity. for a host of variables they’re attitudes aren’t too different. on the other hand, a much larger % of the orthodox population are very secular, and seem more cultural than religious in their identification. muslims actually though seem to have a slightly stronger distrust of mixing religion & gov. than the other two groups (one of the exceptions where they are the outgroup, instead of the orthodox).
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razib, murtad fitri
browsing the world values survey. i clicked pakistan. apparently all 2,000 individuals in the survey for pakistan believe in god. all 2,000.
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thabet
Someone in the comments to this post asks:
Can anyone find a similar poll asking americans if they approve attacks on civilians in arab/muslim countries?
Yes, as it happens:
(See the full report, pdf.)
PIPA is the same organisation that runs World Public Opinion, and from where I cited this poll.
It wouldn’t surprise me if lots of Americans thought using nuclear bombs on Japanese civilians was a ‘good thing’.
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thabet
A poll of Muslim majority countries shows many reject ‘al-Qa’ida’ tactics, but agree with their goal of removing US forces from Muslim countries:
Significant numbers also believe the desire to promote democracy by the US is dishonest, that Islamist parties should be allowed to participate in elections, and that the US is seeking to divide Islam and promote Christianity (see the full report, pdf).
(Via Yglesias.)
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thabet
Here’s an interesting survey of attitudes towards other religions amongst Israeli Jews. 41% of those surveyed believe Christianity is closest to Judaism; 32% said Islam.
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thabet
Global views of countries’ positive or negative influence:
Image taken from World Public Opinion.
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thabet
Americans split over Israeli actions in Gaza.
(Via Glenn Greenwald.)
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thabet
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thabet
A reader sent me a link to the The Muslim West Facts Project by Gallup and the Coexist Foundation.
So I am sharing it with you.
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thabet
Not only Egyptians believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories: It seems Egyptians are not alone: nearly a quarter of Germans polled think the US government had a role in 9/11.
I found the results from China, Indonesia and the Ukraine interesting — a significant number (a majority in China and Indonesia) answered don’t know. Don’t know or don’t care?
In Nigeria (a country with a large Muslim population), however, there is no such desire for conspiracies. (Although, of course, we aren’t given a Muslim/Christian breakdown.)
Lots of people will blame education. Possibly. But more literate, numerate, ‘advanced’, ‘modern’ populations were duped by Tony Blair’s propaganda pieces. I think it will be a mix of education, access to various forms of media and trust in government*.
(Via FP Passport.)
*Healthy trust demands healthy scepticism.
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thabet
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thabet
A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries found that people in 14 of them expressed the belief that their governments should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Respondents in three countries favoured taking the Palestinian side (not surprisingly these were Egypt, Iran, and Turkey). India remained divided. No country favoured taking Israel’s side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.
A majority of people in Muslim majority countries (Indonesia, Nigeria and Azerbaijan), rejected taking sides, as did the EU countries covered by the survey (Britain, France, Spain).
There was also significant support for the UN to be more involved through the use of peacekeepers.
(Via Glenn Greenwald, who also discusses what these sorts of views mean for American politics.)
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thabet
Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and a majority say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey showed on Thursday.
