Poll finds Muslim support for bin Laden waning

[Ted]

In heavily Islamic countries, support for terror attacks on Americans drops

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:51 p.m. ET July 14, 2005
WASHINGTON - Support for Osama bin Laden and terrorist bombings against Americans and their allies in Iraq is falling in several heavily Muslim countries, particularly those where terrorist attacks have occurred.
According to surveys conducted for the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, young people in Morocco, Lebanon, Pakistan and Turkey view America more favorably than the overall populations in those countries.
However, the research found solid majorities in Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan and Indonesia have an unfavorable view of the United States, while Moroccans are split.
“There are some signs — especially in Indonesia, Morocco and even Turkey, where they’ve had their own experience with terrorist bombings — that there’s less support than there was in 2003 for suicide bombings and for bin Laden,” Pew director Andrew Kohut said.
Pew interviewed people in 17 countries, six of which — Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey — have majority Muslim populations. The polling was done before last week’s terrorist bombings in London.
Fewer justify suicide bombings
In Lebanon, the number of people who think the use of suicide bombing and other forms of violence is justified in defense of Islam has dropped from 73 percent in the summer of 2002 to 39 percent now. Smaller drops were seen in Morocco, from 40 percent a year ago to 13 percent now, and in Pakistan and Indonesia. In Jordan, the number of people who feel such violence is justified has grown slightly; the number in Turkey remains very low.
Since March 2004, the sentiment for suicide bombing against Americans and their allies in Iraq dropped from 70 percent to 49 percent in Jordan, which neighbors Iraq, and dropped by smaller margins in Pakistan, Turkey, and Morocco.
Public confidence in bin Laden has dipped sharply since May 2003 in Indonesia, Morocco, Lebanon and Turkey — all countries that have experienced recent terrorist bombings. In Pakistan and Jordan, a majority of people continue to say they have at least some confidence in bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaida.
Causes of extremism vary
The reasons for Islamic extremism varied from one majority-Muslim country to the next. Poverty and lack of jobs were mentioned most often in some countries, while U.S. policies and influence were mentioned in others. Lack of education, immorality and lawlessness were also mentioned.
“The concern about the causes of extremism are varied,” said Wendy Sherman, who was counselor for the State Department in the Clinton administration. “When the U.S. government looks at our counterterrorism efforts, we clearly have to use a variety of approaches.”
The Pew survey found some conflicting feelings about Islam in majority-Muslim countries.
In all of those countries except Jordan, people were more likely to say Islam is playing a greater role in their countries that it did a few years ago. The increasing role of Islam was overwhelmingly seen as a positive development in all those countries except Turkey. Respondents said growing immorality, government corruption and concerns about Western influence were among their reasons for turning to Islam.
A majority of people in Morocco and Pakistan say Islamic extremism greatly threatens their country, and almost half in Indonesia and Turkey said it poses a great threat. Few people in Lebanon and Jordan felt that way.
Muslim identity
Muslims in Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco say they think of themselves first as Muslims, then as citizens of their country. Muslims in Lebanon and Indonesia were divided on how they think of themselves first.
“Many people in Muslim countries view themselves as a Muslim first and they want to see Islam playing a greater role in their countries,” Sherman said, “but they do not want Islamic extremism to take over.”
Sherman said for many Muslims, “strong views of wanting Islam in their life are consistent, in their view, with democratic values.”
The polls were taken in various countries from late April to the end of May with samples of about 1,000 in most countries and slightly fewer than 1,000 in the European countries. The margin of sampling error ranged from 2 percentage points to 4 percentage points, depending on the sample size.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Ralph]

That's all interesting and well and good but how does the avergae Iman in the Mosque feel about Supreme Court nominees?

[Corlyss_D]

It's beginning to dawn on Muslims, perhaps, that the greatest number of people killed by these Islamic terrorists are fellow Muslims.

[Ralph]

It's beginning to dawn on Muslims, perhaps, that the greatest number of people killed by these Islamic terrorists are fellow Muslims.

*****

I don't think it's news to them.

[Barry]

New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
A Poverty of Dignity and a Wealth of Rage
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 15, 2005
A few years ago I was visiting Bahrain and sitting with friends in a fish restaurant when news appeared on an overhead TV about Muslim terrorists, men and women, who had taken hostages in Russia. What struck me, though, was the instinctive reaction of the Bahraini businessman sitting next to me, who muttered under his breath, "Why are we in every story?" The "we" in question was Muslims.

The answer to that question is one of the most important issues in geopolitics today: Why are young Sunni Muslim males, from London to Riyadh and Bali to Baghdad, so willing to blow up themselves and others in the name of their religion? Of course, not all Muslims are suicide bombers; it would be ludicrous to suggest that.

But virtually all suicide bombers, of late, have been Sunni Muslims. There are a lot of angry people in the world. Angry Mexicans. Angry Africans. Angry Norwegians. But the only ones who seem to feel entitled and motivated to kill themselves and totally innocent people, including other Muslims, over their anger are young Sunni radicals. What is going on?

Neither we nor the Muslim world can run away from this question any longer. This is especially true when it comes to people like Muhammad Bouyeri - a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin who last year tracked down the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islamic intolerance, on an Amsterdam street, shot him 15 times and slit his throat with a butcher knife. He told a Dutch court on the final day of his trial on Tuesday: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion."

Clearly, several things are at work. One is that Europe is not a melting pot and has never adequately integrated its Muslim minorities, who, as The Financial Times put it, often find themselves "cut off from their country, language and culture of origin" without being assimilated into Europe, making them easy prey for peddlers of a new jihadist identity.

Also at work is Sunni Islam's struggle with modernity. Islam has a long tradition of tolerating other religions, but only on the basis of the supremacy of Islam, not equality with Islam. Islam's self-identity is that it is the authentic and ideal expression of monotheism. Muslims are raised with the view that Islam is God 3.0, Christianity is God 2.0, Judaism is God 1.0, and Hinduism is God 0.0.

Part of what seems to be going on with these young Muslim males is that they are, on the one hand, tempted by Western society, and ashamed of being tempted. On the other hand, they are humiliated by Western society because while Sunni Islamic civilization is supposed to be superior, its decision to ban the reform and reinterpretation of Islam since the 12th century has choked the spirit of innovation out of Muslim lands, and left the Islamic world less powerful, less economically developed, less technically advanced than God 2.0, 1.0 and 0.0.

"Some of these young Muslim men are tempted by a civilization they consider morally inferior, and they are humiliated by the fact that, while having been taught their faith is supreme, other civilizations seem to be doing much better," said Raymond Stock, the Cairo-based biographer and translator of Naguib Mahfouz. "When the inner conflict becomes too great, some are turned by recruiters to seek the sick prestige of 'martyrdom' by fighting the allegedly unjust occupation of Muslim lands and the 'decadence' in our own."

This is not about the poverty of money. This is about the poverty of dignity and the rage it can trigger.

One of the London bombers was married, with a young child and another on the way. I can understand, but never accept, suicide bombing in Iraq or Israel as part of a nationalist struggle. But when a British Muslim citizen, nurtured by that society, just indiscriminately blows up his neighbors and leaves behind a baby and pregnant wife, to me he has to be in the grip of a dangerous cult or preacher - dangerous to his faith community and to the world.

How does that happen? Britain's Independent newspaper described one of the bombers, Hasib Hussain, as having recently undergone a sudden conversion "from a British Asian who dressed in Western clothes to a religious teenager who wore Islamic garb and only stopped to say salaam to fellow Muslims."

The secret of this story is in that conversion - and so is the crisis in Islam. The people and ideas that brought about that sudden conversion of Hasib Hussain and his pals - if not stopped by other Muslims - will end up converting every Muslim into a suspect and one of the world's great religions into a cult of death.

[Corlyss_D]

Wait till they get thru with the Jamaican bomber. That guy is the most interesting of the 4.

[Ralph]

Wait till they get thru with the Jamaican bomber. That guy is the most interesting of the 4.

*****

These people are "interesting?"