Crooks and Liars draws our attention to Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, a book that details the results of a Gallup survey compiled from tens of thousands face-to-face interviews with the inhabitants of more than 35 predominantly Muslim nations. Among the more interesting results are the following:
- Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable.
- Large majorities of Muslims would guarantee free speech if it were up to them to write a new constitution AND they say religious leaders should have no direct role in drafting that constitution.
- Muslims around the world say that what they LEAST admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values—the same answers that Americans themselves give when asked this question.
- When asked about their dreams for the future, Muslims say they want better jobs and security, not conflict and violence.
- Muslims say the most important thing Westerners can do to improve relations with their societies is to change their negative views toward Muslims and respect Islam.
Huh. How ‘bout that? Muslims are very much like non-Muslim Westerners. Of course, ignorance being the currency of the day, you’ll little or nothing about this from the wingnuts. They’re far too invested in fanning the flames of fear and hatred.
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February 29th, 2008 at 1:48 am
billy Joe
Wingnuts think Muslims are monolithic.
If you want to get right down to it, their fear of Muslims is vastly over-the-top.
In the last 100 years, the greatest mass killings were carried out by largely white nations & often by whites purporting to be Christian: WWI, WWII, Nazi Concentration camps, atomic bombing of civilians, Stalinist Soviet Union, etc.
Communist China had it’s moments for sure as did Imperial Japan but, off the top of my head, other incidents of mass killings tend to be fairly local events: Darfur, Rwanda, East Timor, Cambodia (where we also first secretly bombed large #’s of civilians).
Muslims aren’t necessarily big players when it comes to actual genocide and starting bona fide world wars.
I wonder when wingnuts will notice?