A recent group of polls was released by the Pew Charitable Trust (http://www.pewtrusts.com/pdf/PRC_global_Terror_0705.pdf)
One of the core Bush administration initiatives is for democracy in the Muslim world. In the Pew polls, this policy would be boasted by the drop in support for Osama Bid Laden in a few countries like Morocco, and Indonesia. On the other hand there is bad news too. For example majorities in two of our allies in the "War on Terrorism", Jordan and Pakistan, support Osama Bin Laden. How far will the government of Pakistan go to capture a guy that is thought of highly by a majority of the population. More dangerous, how many recruits will continue to join from such a large group of fanatical followers. Can there long-term peace when such large groups of people support terrorism?
The truth is that majorities in many Muslim countries disliked Christians. These would include our allies in Pakistan, Morocco and Turkey. In contrast, the US has only a 22% unfavourable view of Muslims. Again interestingly, the Europeans have, by a factor of about 2, a more unfavourable views of Muslims compared to the US.
There was some other interesting notes in the report. One is that Christianity and Islam is looked on negatively to about the same degree in China (around 50% unfavourable). In India, Christians are viewed quite favourably - 61%. This would lead one to believe that the India & US relationship will probably continue to grow.
1 comment:
There are many folks that claim to be the "fastest growing religion" or the biggest, etc. I find these remarks to be boastful and irrelevant. If I really cared about being part of the largest group, I would have stayed in the Roman Catholic Church with 1 Billion members.
Jesus started with just 12 Apostles. From the Gospels, it is evident he could have had a much larger group. God winnowed Gideon's army to only 300.
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