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I wish we had invested a trillion in figuring out alternate energies, then let the lunatics drink their oil and eat their sand.
None of this is really surprising at all, it reflects past polls. I really don't hold out any hope that any of this lunacy will decline, regardless of our actions in Iraq, and I don't think there's any answer. Fundamental Islam is a cancer, and it's very pervasive through the religion.June 22, 2006
Muslims 'Still in Denial' About 9/11, Pew Survey Finds
By MEG BORTIN International Herald Tribune
PARIS, June 22 ? Non-Muslim Westerners and Muslims around the world have widely different views of world events, and each group tends to view the other as violent, intolerant, and lacking in respect for women, a new international survey of more than 14,000 people in 13 nations indicates.
In what the survey, part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2006, called one of its most striking findings, majorities in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey ? Muslim countries with fairly strong ties to America ? said, for example, that they did not believe that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The findings, illustrating the chasm in beliefs, follow another year of violence and tension centered around that divide. In the past 12 months, there have been terrorist bombings in London, riots in France by unemployed youths, many of them Muslim, a global uproar over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and no letup to the war in Iraq.
This led majorities in the United States and in countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East to describe relations between Muslims and people in Western countries as generally bad, Pew found.
Over all, Muslims in the survey worldwide, including the large Islamic populations in Britain, France, Germany and Spain, broadly blamed the West, while Westerners tended to blame Muslims for the bad relations. Muslims in the Middle East and Asia depicted Westerners as immoral and selfish, while Westerners saw Muslims as fanatical.
The results were not uniform, however, and delivered some surprises: Support for terrorism declined in some Muslim countries surveyed, dropping dramatically in Jordan, where terrorist bombings killed more than 50 people in Amman in November.
Two-thirds of the French people surveyed expressed positive views of Muslims, and even larger majorities of French Muslims felt favorable toward Christians and Jews. Muslims in Europe surveyed were less inclined to see a "clash of civilizations" than general publics in Europe and Muslims elsewhere.
Pew found sharp divergences on respect toward women: Non-Muslims in the West view Muslims as lacking respect, the survey indicated, while Muslims outside Europe say the same of Westerners.
In the West, where many view as discriminatory Islamic customs like mandatory veils for women and prohibitions on women working outside the home or driving, big majorities saw Muslims as not respectful of women. In contrast, fewer than half of the Muslims asked in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey said they associate Westerners with respect toward women. European Muslims surveyed were more likely to view Westerners as respectful of women, though, in some places by wide margins. Pew, which interviewed Muslims in Europe as a group for the first time this year, said their views represented "a bridge" between the widely divergent views of other Europeans and Muslims in Asia and the Middle East.
The overall results, said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, show that "even though relations are not good, there hasn't been a spike in outright hostility between the two groups over the past year." While both sides see relations as bad, he said, "at least it's not getting worse."
Nonetheless, majorities in every country surveyed except Pakistan expressed pessimism about Muslim-Western relations, with Germany most strongly viewing the situation as bad (70 percent), followed by France (66 percent), Turkey (64 percent), Spain and Britain (61 percent), and Egypt (58 percent).
Pew surveyed 14,030 people from March 31 to May 14 in Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United States. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus two to four percentage points in every country except Britain and Germany, where it is six points.
For analytical purposes, Muslims were oversampled in Britain, France, Germany and Spain, and the margin of sampling error for their responses is plus or minus five or six points.
Interviews were conducted face to face, except in the United States, Britain, France and Germany, where they were done by telephone. The poll was conducted nationwide except in India and Pakistan, where is mostly covered only urban areas. In follow-up interviews in countries surveyed about the results, Muslims attributed the poor relations with the West to a variety of causes. But many pointed to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as the main cause and accused the West of double standards on terrorism.
"Whenever the Israelis strike the Palestinians, the international community and the U.N. turn a blind eye or keep quiet," said Saleh Bayeri, a politician and Muslim community leader in Jos, Nigeria. "But when the Palestinians launch a counterattack, it is condemned by America, the U.K. and other friends of Israel as a terror attack."
Pew asked respondents to give their opinions of Christians, Muslims and Jews, and it found anti-Jewish sentiment to be "overwhelming" in the Muslim countries surveyed. It reached 98 percent in Jordan and 97 percent in Egypt.
Majorities in the Muslim world, Pew said, also expressed the opinion that the victory of the militant group, Hamas, in Palestinian elections in January would "be helpful to a fair settlement between Israel and the Palestinians ? a view that is roundly rejected by non-Muslim publics."
Disbelief was strong among Muslims that Arabs were behind the Sept. 11 attacks, with 65 percent in Indonesia and 59 percent in Turkey, for example, expressing that viewpoint. Even in Britain, 56 percent of the Muslims surveyed did not believe that Arabs carried out the attacks. The results, Mr. Kohut said, show that "many Muslims are still in denial" about something that even Osama bin Laden has acknowledged.
I wish we had invested a trillion in figuring out alternate energies, then let the lunatics drink their oil and eat their sand.
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